The Prometheus Exchange
by kyrilu
Summary: Credence Barebone is fighting a long war against Grindelwald until he's pulled back to the year 1926. Features time traveler!Credence from an AU timeline.
1. Chapter 1

He had walked at least two miles away from the rocky valley where they had set up their ragtag base and refugee camp.

The sky was a dull, persistent grey. There was a chill in the air that he combated with a heating charm, on top of the dark wizarding robes he was wearing.

Modesty trudged beside him, along with the Arden siblings. It was still strange, sometimes, seeing his sister after eight years. She was sixteen, her blonde hair cut short in a fashion that uncomfortably reminded Credence of Mary Lou Barebone – and she was no longer quite the scared child she used to be.

But then, neither was he.

"This should be the place," Credence said, finally, halting next to a narrow river.

Theseus Scamander had promised to deliver a message via his brother's creatures. Regular owls or pigeons weren't exactly safe – they learned that lesson the hard way the last time, and it had forced them to relocate.

Credence examined their surroundings. The narrow river ran through the entire woods, but they'd stopped in the center of it. The river rushed and whispered, the cheerful source of survival for the local wildlife.

This area they were in America had gotten lucky. It had avoided the magical devastation that Gellert Grindelwald had wrecked across the globe, enchanted explosions that left the lands in ruins and thousands dead, magical and non-magical alike.

"I still don't think you should put this much faith in this Albus Dumbledore of yours," said Esek Arden into the silence.

Esek was a Muggle and so was his sister Esther. They were no ordinary Muggles, however, but Scourer descendants. They had been raised for this moment in history – when the Statute of Secrecy would fall and everything would go to hell – and Credence didn't trust them.

Credence could barely trust his own sister, who had been taken in by the same Scourer faction that the Ardens were a part of.

This is why Albus has to return, he thought. Credence wasn't made for political maneuvering, never mind military leadership. All he could be was a weapon and nothing more.

He didn't argue with Esek, only started pacing to see if he could catch sign of Theseus' messenger. Suddenly, his eye caught a flash of blue.

Credence quickly grabbed it. He knew that _Accio_ wouldn't work on a magical creature, and instead sent out a wisp of a shadow to snatch it, a jet black claw that shot out of his outstretched palm.

It was a Billywig. Credence took out his wand and trapped it in a shield charm bubble, not wishing to get stung, and he carefully dissipated the Obscurus claw.

"Credence Barebone," he said to the sapphire beetle. " _We wait for light, but behold obscurity. For brightness, but we walk in darkness."_

"Always the most dramatic watchwords," Esther said with a snort. Her arms were crossed and she watched the proceedings while leaning against a tree, her curled dark hair brushing against the trunk.

"The verses can never leave me, either," Modesty said, quietly. She met Credence's eyes briefly, then looked away.

Esek visibly grimaced. Despite Credence's wariness of him, at least he was in agreement about the Second Salemers' religious fanaticism.

The Scourers today were a complicated sort. The original Scourers were wizarding mercenaries who'd been targeted by MACUSA after enabling the events of the Salem Witch Trials.

The surviving Scourers passed on knowledge of the wizarding world to their children, as well as a grudge against magical authorities. Some of them brought cultish religion into the fold, while others formed what was essentially a secret organization of Muggles who kept a close eye on magical society, waiting for the day when they would reveal themselves.

Their motivations were murky and strange, and they were trusted merely because they were allies in the war against Grindelwald.

Credence shook off the thoughts of the Scourers from his head. It wouldn't do to dwell on their machinations.

He made himself concentrate as he listened to Theseus' message, a low voice that abruptly crackled from the Billywig's stinger. It was spelled so only he could hear it.

The message had just finished when they were attacked.

Credence immediately called Fawkes to his side, and the phoenix appeared in a burst of flame.

"Esek, Modesty, Esther, return to camp," he said in a low voice. "Make sure they're safe. I'll stay here."

Credence knew that he was the one they were after. Esek, Modesty, and Esther darted off, slipping away through the trees, and even after all this time, Credence found himself whispering a prayer to Modesty's retreating back.

The attackers were Grindelwald's followers, clad in dark blue cloaks that were inscribed with that familiar insignia of his. They circled the river, wands drawn.

Grimly, Credence stretched out his arms, gathering the shadows around his body. His vision flickered white.

As he gathered shadows, Fawkes gathered fire. The darkness and the light swirled together, Fawkes hovering behind him.

"If he wants me," Credence said to the blue-clad figures, "he'll have to come for me himself."

He swept the fire and shadows outward, an arc of grey and black and orange and red.

It got at least two of them—he could sense the moment when the gale of Obscurus wisps and phoenix fire burned the attackers, scorching against skin and strangling.

Spell fire erupted from the trees, jets of light hurling toward him and Fawkes. Credence swerved out of the way, his long shoulder length ponytail swaying as he moved, the mass of fire and shadow coalescing around him like a cocoon.

If Albus Dumbledore was here, he'd likely disapprove of Credence's heavy reliance on his Obscurus, with Fawkes usually present as a stabilizing factor. Albus had always tried to emphasize classic dueling techniques when he'd mentored Credence. Transfiguration, Charms, Defense – the words, the wand movements, the strategy.

Credence was used to being a blunt instinctual force. It was a difficult thing to grow out of.

He stalked toward the trees which the attackers were using as covers.

"I will burn you," he said, "if you don't Disapparate and tell your lord to face me in person. If he's here about the contents of the message I received today, tell him to send a Patronus."

He said it loudly as clearly as he could.

He continued, "I will meet him by myself, away from any of the Muggle refugees, and I will talk to him."

It was his last warning. He closed his eyes and summoned a storm.

He opened his eyes to a wasteland. Fawkes perched on his shoulder and started to sing a soft hymn that Credence had taught him.

The river was gone, and so was most of the woods.

Credence felt utterly drained. He staggered, then managed to use the last of his energy to Apparate back to camp.

He appeared to the sight of Esther standing over the bodies of three other Grindelwald followers.

"You missed the fun," she said, clipping a knife back onto her belt. It was a magical artifact that the Scourers had somehow managed to get their hands on; its blade was able to block most spells and it could even pierce _Protego._

Esek emerged from one of the tents. Unlike Esther, he hadn't been trained to fight. "What did they want? The message?"

"Yes."

Esek swore. "We'll have to move camp again."

"I think he's willing to bargain," Credence said. He tried to smooth his uneven breathing, straightening his posture. "Wait for him to send word. I'll talk to him—"

His vision swam before his eyes. He slumped onto his knees, and he heard Modesty's worried voice. She ran over to bend beside him, and she said, "Brother."

She helped steady him and eased him onto a bed pallet in one of the tents.

"You can't keep doing this," she said, eyes narrowed, her mouth in a solemn frown. "The Scourers kept records on Obscurials. You'll burn yourself out from overuse. Even with Fawkes helping."

Credence wasn't certain what to say. He knew he had to keep the Scourers and refugees alive until Albus came back. He let out a soft sound like a sigh, and let unconsciousness pull him downward.

* * *

He woke up alone to an empty tent. A ghostly black phoenix blazed in front of him.

It spoke.

* * *

He met Gellert Grindelwald in the empty bowl of earth where the woods had stood, now a barren wasteland.

Grindelwald wore a dark cloak that fluttered in the cool night breeze. His blond hair was streaked with white, and his eyes were the same cold and fierce color of blue.

The last time they had seen each other, Credence remembered, it was a battlefield in the Forbidden Forest.

With the help of the dragons Newt led, the wizards and witches there managed to fight off Grindelwald and his forces. Hogwarts was still one of several remaining strongholds in Europe, its grounds overflowing with refugees both magical and non-magical alike.

After the battle, Credence had departed for America when the Scourers had contacted them. Sometimes he wished he hadn't left. Even if Albus was gone, he missed Newt, Tina, and Theseus.

"You cannot keep protecting Muggles, Credence," Grindelwald said, into the space of silence between them. "You're dying. I've seen it in with my Inner Eye."

Credence didn't reply. He knew he was.

Grindelwald continued talking in that smooth, warm voice of his, as if it was eight years ago and Credence was the same boy in the alleyway. "You're not like Albus, Credence. You don't fervently believe in magical harmony between wizards and Muggles. You don't care about ideology, not after being raised by that Muggle woman. Come with me."

"I won't," Credence said, meeting Grindelwald's gaze without flinching. "This is the side of the war I found myself on. You lost your chance when you lied to me eight years ago."

Now, he fought for Albus Dumbledore's vision of the world.

"It was a grave mistake," Grindelwald said softly, stepping forward, reaching his hand out to rest on Credence's shoulder. "I will always regret it."

The world was in chaos, magical and non-magical society at a tipping point and Credence caught in between.

Credence closed his eyes. He could feel a sensation roaring through his blood, through his veins, and it was as if the Obscurus was breaking through the surface of his skin and swallowing him whole.

When Grindelwald drew back, Credence said, quietly, breathless, "You need to stop doing that."

This constant, insistent gentleness.

Grindelwald looked at Credence like he had said something terribly amusing. "It's what you want."

"I want," Credence said, "to smother you to death with my Obscurus, to force the shadows down your throat until you choke."

He wanted Grindelwald to drown in shadows, to drown in _him._

And Grindelwald just chuckled, fond, as if Credence had pledged him his life. "Yes, I know you feel something like that."

Credence hated that Grindelwald had made him like this. Grindelwald had given him hope and affection when he was a boy in New York, then he'd taken it away.

The story would have played out differently if Grindelwald had realized the truth earlier and taken him in. But now, Credence was tired, he was exhausted, he was fighting a war that he had followed Albus Dumbledore into, even though on some level, he was still a scared child frightened of his own shadow.

"You're not here for me," Credence said. He chose to get right to the point. "You want to know where Albus is."

"You said that you were willing to talk," Grindelwald said, with a shrug. "But you're correct. His disappearance has become a concern for both of our sides."

"I'll tell you what Theseus' message said if you'll allow the Muggles I'm guarding have safe passage to Hogwarts."

"I'm not certain I should let you do that," Grindelwald murmured. "Those Scourers of yours are tricky little nuisances. MACUSA should have wiped them out centuries ago."

"They're not all Scourers," Credence said. "Most of them are refugees. Harmless Muggles. Take the risk, Gellert."

A pause. "Stubborn boy. Fine. You have a week for evacuation."

Credence felt a momentary twinge of guilt, but he knew that Albus could defend himself and Albus would likely approve of a deal like this for Muggles' lives. And he was probably long gone from any of the places that Theseus had mentioned, anyway; the information was months old, from a searcher that Theseus had dispatched after him.

"He was last seen at St. Mungo's and the Ministry of Magic before they were destroyed," Credence said. _By you,_ he didn't add out loud.

"After that it's complicated. Theseus said Albus met with magical researchers who he then Obliviated. They remembered seeing him, but not why he was there. Then he might've gone to wherever the goblins have been hiding, but nobody knows where that is."

"St. Mungo's, the Ministry, magical researchers, and goblins," Grindelwald repeated. "Strange. I thought he would be seeking the other Hallows…"

"We don't know why he left," Credence said.

Theseus and many of the others were hoping that whatever Albus' reason for leaving, it was supposed to help win the war. A weapon, perhaps.

Grindelwald looked thoughtful. Then he nodded. "Thank you. You have your one week, Credence. Are you certain you still won't come?"

He held his hand out, palm upturned, and it would have been so simple to take it.

Credence didn't. He tilted his head toward the sky, speckled with winking stars, and he said, "Your Patronus. Is it because of him or me?"

Grindelwald only smiled, and he Disapparated in a burst of black.

* * *

Credence stood in the devastated wasteland for what felt like an hour. He almost didn't notice when Fawkes curled his talons against his shoulder, appearing in a gust of fire.

Fawkes held a drawstring pouch in his beak.

Credence extricated it from the phoenix's grasp. He took out his wand and muttered a few basic diagnostic charms, but it seemed like it was safe.

He opened the pouch. In it was a golden hourglass laid into a necklace.

There were two dates etched into the hourglass – written in Albus Dumbledore's familiar spidery handwriting – and Credence felt his whole body still.

"Albus," he said. "What have you done?"

The hourglass turned on its own volition. Credence cast a hasty Disillusionment Charm around himself and Fawkes, feeling the cold sensation cloak him before he disappeared.

* * *

There were three boys dueling in a field of grass, spell fire sparking from their withdrawn wands.

A girl ran out to the middle of the duel, yelling, and she was struck by a beam of green.

She exploded into a shrieking black cloud, dissolving, and invisible, Credence caught her. He grabbed a shard of her where he sensed she lingered, and he held it between his palms.

The moment he did, the hourglass necklace draped around Credence's wrist turned again.

* * *

He opened his eyes to his old bedroom in the Second Salemers' chapel. His hair was no longer long again, but cropped short, and he was younger.

Credence wandlessly dispelled his Disillusionment Charm. He kept the one on Fawkes, who seemed to have settled on top of one of the bed posts, judging by the rustling sound from his wings.

Grimacing, Credence realized that he didn't have his wand on him anymore. At least he could perform some basic wandless magic and anyway, he could always draw power from his Obscurus.

He cradled the black fragment in his hands and breathed into it. He blew swirls of smoky grey, ushering shadows to make it grow.

The black fragment started to reform, and eventually it flashed. In the place of the shadow there was an unconscious young girl lying across Credence's lap.

She had blonde hair that reminded Credence of Modesty, but it was long and curled like Queenie Goldstein. Credence stared at her. She was fourteen, if he remembered correctly, and he couldn't believe what Albus had put into motion, what he expected from Credence.

This was madness.

According to the hourglass, the year was 1926. The year when Credence discovered what he was. Soon he would be seeing a disguised Gellert Grindelwald in the streets. And Newt would arrive in New York—and Tina working with MACUSA—

Credence inhaled, exhaled, and reached for the drawstring pouch. He returned the hourglass necklace inside, and upon further exploration, found that the pouch was stuffed with money.

It contained a substantial amount of Wizarding coins and Muggle dollar bills. The bag had been charmed so that it wasn't heavy. It would be enough to support Credence and the girl for years.

Finally, he discovered a piece of parchment.

 _Dear Credence_ , it read. _I apologise for imposing this burden on you. I would have gone myself—or gone with you—but I could not._

 _I know you must think me a fool for playing with time. But it's the only solution that I believe can change the course of this war, however dangerous._

 _You must stop Gellert before the Statute of Secrecy is broken and the world falls into ruin. I have faith that you can do it, and I am not asking you to do this alone. Approach me and your other friends who you deem trustworthy. We will always be here for you, no matter what timeline._

 _As for Ariana – saving her is truly foolishness on my part. No, it is selfishness, too. I knew that only you could save her, as an Obscurial who can channel his powers, and that is why I sent you._

 _This Time Turner, which I commissioned the goblins to build with certain specifications, is capable of only sending one person. There was no time to modify it to accommodate another person._

 _I very badly wanted her to live. Given this chance to meddle with time, I wanted to give her the life she never got to live._

 _You did not ask for this mission, but I chose you because of your nature and for that, I am sorry. I hope I will be able to make it up to you in the next life._

 _Albus._

Credence ran a hand across his now uncomfortably short hair. He was…stunned, and he had no idea what this meant for the new future.

Grindelwald had been right. Credence wasn't an ideologue. He wasn't a revolutionary. He was an Obscurial who served in a time of war for the people who had befriended and mentored him, and he expected his own shadows to kill him one day, because he was born to die like that.

He gathered Ariana Dumbledore in his arms—she was surprisingly light—and placed her in bed, tucking her underneath the blankets. He sat on the floor with his back pressed to the wall, deep in thought until he finally fell asleep.

* * *

He woke Ariana early in the morning. She stirred at the touch of his hand, and her eyes were wide and uncertain when she saw him.

"My name is Credence Barebone," he said, sitting at the edge of the bed. He gestured toward Fawkes, still perched on the bedpost, now visible since the Disillusionment Charm had worn off. "And this is Fawkes. He's a phoenix."

Fawkes made a pleased chirping noise. He flew over to her, bright red feathers brushing against her hair, and she smiled when they tickled her chin.

"I won't hurt you," Credence said. "I'm a friend of your brother's. Albus sent me to help you."

"Where is this place?" she asked, peering at the mostly empty room. She spoke in a soft, tentative voice. "The last thing I remember—they were fighting. I tried to stop them. And I turned into that—that thing again—"

She stopped, realizing what she said to an apparent stranger.

"No," Credence said. "I'm like you, too. That's why Albus sent me to help you."

He held out his hand and a ribbon of small shadowy flowers linked on a vine danced across his fingers, then melted back into his skin.

"I didn't know there were others like me," Ariana said in a hushed whisper. "I'm supposed to keep it hidden so I won't hurt anyone."

This girl, Credence knew, killed her mother.

He did, too, and he had killed his sister as well.

"It can be controlled," Credence explained. "It takes practice and time, but it's possible. I've been able to do most of this because of Fawkes. Albus told me that it's old elemental magic theory that isn't taught anymore. Fire can stabilize darkness. Your Obscurus—your shadow—can be held back so it doesn't devour you entirely."

His original training had been a rocky process. He had stumbled through figuring out the variations on and limitations on his Obscurus abilities, toying with shadows and fire.

Ariana blinked up at Fawkes, then looked at Credence. "I want to be able do that. Can you teach me?"

"I'll try," Credence said. He knew what it was like to be an Obscurial child. "But there's something else I need to tell you."

He told her about the Time Turner.

* * *

He didn't want to kill his mother again.

He knew that Mary Lou Barebone had turned him into an Obscurial. She made him scared of his own magic, inherent magical ability curling inward until he became something like a demon.

But he didn't want to kill her. She wasn't a witch or wizard on the battlefield.

She was reading the Bible when he went downstairs. Chastity and Modesty were preparing today's breakfast offerings for the street urchins, while their mother had her Bible out, sharp eyes scanning the pages as she mouthed along with the familiar words.

"Mother," Credence said, his voice soft but firm. "You will leave this house."

She glanced from the pages, looking at him with disbelief as if she had entirely missed his words. Slowly, she said, "Credence. What did you say?"

"You were right," Credence said. "I'm a witch. And you're not going to hurt me for it anymore. I'm more of a monster than anything."

He loosened it, just a little, his eyes glowing a faint white. Chastity and Modesty were watching him, paralyzed in what appeared to be shock.

"You will not order me out of my own home," his mother said, striding forward. "You evil creature—I took you in to purify you because nobody else would. Witches burn, Credence, and you must not embrace this wicked nature of yours."

"You can't treat me like this," Credence said tightly. "I wasn't born a monster. You made me one. You gave me this."

He let go. He didn't want to be here—he didn't want to be human, to feel this real, to remember what it was like to be struck across his hand, trying not to cry—and he expanded as a bundle of shadows.

He shouldn't be doing this, not without Fawkes, but he didn't care.

"Credence!" shouted a voice. It was from upstairs, and Credence turned the mass that was now his body to see Ariana Dumbledore standing with Fawkes behind her.

"You told me you could control it," she said.

 _I can,_ Credence thought, from within the darkness. He could. But there was something about this place that made him feel young and scared and hurt again. The memories of being punished and being unable to stop it—why didn't he have control over it, then? Why didn't it kill him like it was supposed to?

And his feelings were a tangled mess on other matters, too. He was in the past, on this _mission_ of Albus Dumbledore's, and Albus had sent him here to all places and times. Had he known that Credence would have to confront his mother-?

Meanwhile, Ariana stretched out her hand. She touched Credence, and her arm shimmered, turning into shadows as well.

Fawkes beat his wings. Flames rolled outward from his feathers, trickling them both with sparks that couldn't burn, and to Credence, it felt like rain.

"I killed my mother," she said, holding his hand through the darkness. "I still don't know exactly why I was angry that day. I think I wanted to leave the house—to go outside—because I'm never allowed. And I lost control more than usual and everything was a loud, blurry blackness. It's the worst feeling in the world."

Credence found his own hand, found his skin and bones again. He gripped her hand in return and then found his feet and legs and the rest of his body, the Obscurus fading rapidly fading away.

Still holding Ariana's hand, Credence stood in front of the trembling Mary Lou Barebone.

"You will leave," Credence said, "and never come back."

She gave him one last cold stare, and left.

Credence took some money from the pouch Albus had given him and left it on the dining table.

"Chastity," he said, to his older sister standing a wary distance away. "Keep this. Take care of Modesty."

"Where—where are you going?" Chastity asked.

"I'll rent an apartment somewhere in the city," Credence said. "You and Modesty, you can leave, stay, do whatever you wish. The Second Salemers won't be able to keep running without Ma, but you can turn it into a legitimate church organization. Or you can find a job and live elsewhere. Or…"

He stopped. It wasn't the best idea, but maybe it would be advantageous in the long run. He regretted leaving Modesty to grow up among the Scourers again, but she had loved learning and she'd turned out to be a well-read scholar of the wizarding world, and he might need her again this time around.

The Scourers would also keep Chastity and Modesty safe, if Grindelwald or MACUSA ever thought of seeking them out because of Credence.

"Chastity," he said, "there's a woman named Mabel who goes to our church. Go find her and say that you want to settle the Barebone debt with the Ardens. They'll take you in."

"The Barebone debt-?"

"If you go to them, they'll explain," Credence said.

He didn't want to break the Statute of Secrecy any further than he already had.

* * *

After they had an awkward breakfast with Chastity and Modesty, Credence and Ariana set off into the New York streets in search of an apartment building.

Credence hugged Modesty tightly before he left, promising to try to visit her, no matter what she and Chastity chose to do. He wished that he could take her with him, but Rappaport's Law was still in full force in America, and he didn't want to thrust her into this life of his just yet.

Fawkes had another Disillusionment Charm placed on him and he was currently nestling on top of Ariana's hair. Ariana was wearing one of Chastity's old winter coats, and she looked around at the tall buildings with wonder. Eventually, she grew bored and said, "What was that all about with your sisters? About a debt?"

"It's American history," Credence said. He launched into the story, which he had read from a book in the Hogwarts library a long time ago, and he'd heard the version of the tale that Esek Arden had told him when they had met.

In the eighteenth century, there was a man named Bartholomew Barebone, one of Mary Lou Barebone's ancestors. He was a Scourer descendant, aware of the existence of the magical community, and he attempted to expose them.

It eventually failed. Bartholomew was thrown into Muggle jail for killing Muggles who he had mistaken for wizards.

Yet Bartholomew had succeeded in finding and revealing numerous wizarding addresses and practices.

The Scourers—the more knowledgeable, in touch faction of the Scourer descendants—disapproved of Bartholomew's rash actions. They didn't want the reveal to come like this, and they weren't prepared, either.

However, Bartholomew's leaked information was genuine and the details were valuable. The Scourers recorded the facts, retrieved a wand Bartholomew stole, and covertly visited the area around several wizarding locations.

In sum, they owed the Barebones a debt. The leader of the Scourer faction in the 1800s was a woman named Arden.

"In the time where I came from," Credence said, "the Scourers settled the debt themselves by taking in Modesty. Esek Arden trained her to be a scholar."

"A scholar?"

"Scourer scholars analyze wizarding history, current events, magic, politics, culture," Credence said. "Stockpiling knowledge. It's a way to be ready when the Statute of Secrecy fails. There would be a power vacuum, Muggles unsure how to handle magical society, and the original plan was for the Scourers to step in, armed to the teeth with all that knowledge, and they'd be the new Muggle leaders."

"That doesn't sound pleasant," Ariana said, with a frown. "That sounds almost like what Albus and Gellert talk about. Muggles being dangerous."

Credence halted walking, then made himself continue. He hadn't told Ariana that the dark wizard he had been fighting in the future was her brother's friend Gellert Grindelwald.

"It didn't end up working out like the Scourers wanted," Credence said, eventually. "The war turned everything around. They allied with the wizarding resistance against the dark wizard, because we had the same enemy."

"What a strange future," she murmured. She reached her hand to her head, presumably to pet Fawkes briefly, and a lost expression shuttered her face.

Credence was reminded how young she was, and how Albus had written that he couldn't do this alone.

"Do you want to go to your brothers?"

"You said you wanted to stay here in America to take care of that dark wizard," Ariana said. "I want to stay with you, so you can teach me how to control my Obscurus. I want to make sure that I won't hurt my family anymore."

Her eyes were a bright, determined blue, and Credence looked at her, then nodded.

* * *

Credence had never been able to kill Gellert Grindelwald in the future. Their duels always resulted in stalemates, or they were interrupted with one side retreating depending on the circumstances.

Once, Albus had gotten the closest to killing Grindelwald. Then, of course, he vanished, on that quest of his to assemble a Time Turner.

This time, Credence thought, I can kill him.

He wanted to do it mostly alone, at least for now. He didn't know why he couldn't bring himself to reach out to Albus—maybe it was cowardice, maybe it was anger—but he would finish what he was sent here for and he would make sure that Ariana eventually reunited with her brothers after she got a handle on her Obscurus.

* * *

"You have to let your entire body go," Credence said.

They were moving onto the next step of their so-called Obscurus training. It was beyond the usual lessons of playing with pieces of shadow; it was the transition of sublimation, the complete phasing of a solid to a gaseous state.

"I've only done that twice in my life," Ariana said. She didn't look at him.

"It's important that you know how to switch to it and out of it," Credence said. "It's when we're at our most dangerous, our most unstable."

"Can you change with me?"

Credence took her hands into his. Fawkes perched in between them, hovering above the place where their fingers interlaced.

He said, "I will."

Her pupils fogged over, a film of white, white, white. The energy of the Obscurus swept her hair behind her shoulders, the blonde strands rippling as if caught by the wind.

"When I was little, there was one story in the Tales of Beetle the Bard that Mum never read to me," Ariana said, apropos of nothing, her thin lips moving underneath her now glowing eyes. "Mum thought it would scare me, it would remind me what happened to me.

"There's an innocent maiden in the story, and a warlock rips her heart out and she dies. I suppose it's almost like what happened to me.

"But one night, when Mum and my brothers were sleeping, I took the book from its shelf. I read it by the light of the moon from the bedroom window.

"I didn't think I was like the maiden, when I read it. I think I'm like the warlock. He had a black heart."

She pulled backward, folded her hands over her chest. Then she melted into a swirling vortex of shadows.

Credence recognized this.

"This is what it means to be an Obscurial," Credence said, reaching his hand out to meet the cloudy form of her. "We will always think it's our fault."

He said, "It isn't."

Credence thought of Mary Lou Barebone with the belt and her denunciations. He could never shake off the feeling that he was sinful, he was tainted, that magic was inherently wrong. It was why he usually shied away from using normal magic, retreating into the comfort of the Obscurus' darkness.

He twisted forward to join Ariana, an accompanying bolt of grey, and Fawkes whistled, sending simmering flames coursing through the both of them.

* * *

Tina stood in front of the bustling department store where the anti-magic No-Maj group usually gathered in the mornings. It was another stakeout, tracking to see if they were a genuine threat.

She remembered the young man she had seen the last time, a boy named Credence Barebone. He'd handed her a flyer, his eyes averted, and she'd introduced herself to him.

Today, the Second Salemers weren't here. She frowned, wondering if they'd changed the meeting schedule.

Her eyes lingered over a blonde No-Maj woman passing by, and she was lost in thought for several moments, thinking-

Then she saw him.

Credence Barebone was wearing a long dark coat, his hands shrugged in his pockets and his eyes observing the passerby. Next to him was a girl dressed in a burgundy coat who Tina had never seen among the Second Salemers before. She had her hands pressed against the department store window, studying the displayed clothes.

When Tina walked up to him, she was surprised to see that Credence broke into a genuine smile. It was a quirk of the corners of his mouth, before it disappeared.

"Credence," she said. "Do you remember me from last week? I'm Tina."

"I remember," Credence said. He gestured toward the girl at his side. "This is Ariana."

Ariana stared at Tina with narrow blue eyes. Tina heard a lilting British accent in her voice when she spoke. "Hullo, Miss Goldstein."

"Hello, Ariana," Tina said, with an attempt at a smile. "Are you with the—Second Salemers as well?"

"The Second Salemers has been disbanded," Credence said. His tone was brisk and low. "I told my mother to leave, and the organization is gone."

Tina hadn't expected for her case to be abruptly dropped like this. But it wasn't the case she was thinking about, not truly. She had seen how Mary Lou Barebone acted toward her adopted children, dragging them across the city and threatening punishment.

"Are you and your sisters doing okay?" she asked.

"Modesty and Chastity went to stay with…family friends," Credence said. Then he smiled. "Auror Goldstein. I'm here to see if I can ask for a job at MACUSA."

Holy Tituba, Tina thought. What?

"You're a No-Maj," she said. "Er. Aren't you? You grew up with the Salemers. I didn't know—"

"I thought I was," Credence said. He started walking, and said, "Come on. We can discuss it over lunch if you want."

A thousand questions were buzzing in Tina's mind, and so she chose to accompany him.

* * *

On the walk to a nearby café, Ariana talked to Tina. Credence had instructed her earlier to not say too much, and she obeyed, telling Tina only that she was an orphan, fourteen years old, and a witch.

They took a seat at a booth, Tina across from both Credence and Ariana. After they made their orders and the food came—three plates of sandwiches, two coffees, and hot cocoa—Credence waved a hand, his eyes screwed in concentration.

"Just a Notice-Me-Not charm," he explained, after he dropped his hand. "So the Muggles—No-Majs don't pay attention to us."

"You don't have a wand?"

Credence grimaced, recalling his abrupt transportation across timelines. "I lost it. I've been meaning to get a replacement because I'm not the best at wandless magic. And a wand for her, too, if she wants."

"I'd like an American wand," Ariana said. "My mum had one."

That was news to Credence. Albus had never told him much about his mother. "She did?"

"She was born here," Ariana said, looking down at the mug of cocoa. "A Muggleborn. She emigrated a long time ago."

"I'm sorry you lost your mother," Tina said. "I lost my parents to dragonpox when I was a kid."

"Sorry about your parents, too," Ariana said. She seemed like she wanted to say something more-that it was different-but she cast a sideways glance at Credence and sipped her hot chocolate.

In the past week, Credence Barebone had found that Ariana Dumbledore wasn't anything like Albus.

On her good days, she was a fast learner, bending Obscurus shadows to her will with Fawkes at her side. On her bad days, she was moody and silent, staring blankly outside one of the windows in their small apartment. Every time Credence offered to contact her brothers, she refused, and Credence wondered if she was quietly blaming them for the duel at Godric's Hollow, the duel that was supposed to kill her. Credence often ended up sitting beside her, his hand wound into her fingers, his attempt at silently conveying, _I understand._

It reminded him of growing up with Modesty.

For several moments, the three of them ate in silence, but it was clear that Tina was bursting with questions. Tina really was the same.

Credence took the initiative. "Auror Goldstein, what do you know about Eloise Mintumble?"

"Mintumble?" Tina repeated. "I think I heard something about her in history class at Ilvermony."

"She was one of the first recorded time travelers," Credence said.

He had recently tried to retrace Albus' plan on constructing the Time Turner, borrowing books from one of the magical libraries in New York. There was something calming about research – it distracted his mind away from Grindelwald, and it was like the years when he had stayed at Hogwarts under Albus' tutelage, constantly frequenting the Hogwarts library to learn more about the wizarding world.

Tina said, "I think I remember. She went far into the past and when she came back, she aged considerably, then died. I believe she was a British Unspeakable-? Don't tell me you're trying to say you're a-?"

Credence inclined his head.

"That's ridiculous!" Tina said, her voice rising. "What happened to her proves that time travel doesn't work without killing you. That's why unauthorized time travel experiments are illegal and government projects are highly regulated by the ICW. You're either crazy, or I'm going to have to take you in."

"I hope you don't arrest me," Credence said. "We were friends in the future. Tina—let me show you. Please."

He withdrew a memory from his temples, a string of silver, and held it out to her. He didn't have a Pensieve with him, but he knew that Tina's Legilimency Auror training would suffice when it came to viewing a memory.

* * *

Eventually, Tina believed him.

"That Albus Dumbledore friend of yours is nuts," she said. "Your future sounds grim, but I can't believe he would actually mess with time like this."

"Are you still going to arrest me?"

"I'll—I'll help," she said, after a pause. "If this goes too far, though, I'll have to report you."

That was close enough, thought Credence. It felt reassuring to have Tina on his side again.


	2. Chapter 2

Tina had genuinely been considering closing the case entirely.

The Second Salemers were out of commission with Mary Lou Barebone gone from the helm, and anyhow, Tina had gathered that the Salemers weren't a true threat, as anti-magic as they were.

They were these religiously fanatic nutjobs who ranted on street corners and mostly inspired disbelief and ridicule from other No-Majs. They weren't terrorists. The Second Salemers had been put on MACUSA's watch list because of a Barebone being involved, Bartholomew Barebone breaching the Statute of Secrecy being a sore memory, but Mary Lou didn't seem to pose as much as a threat in comparison.

Still, Tina didn't like to leave things hanging. She had heard weird rumblings from her underworld contacts about a mysterious No-Maj cult who were infiltrating magical society, and when she repeated the rumors to her co-workers, they shrugged and said that bit of gossip had always existed.

"You can't always believe what you hear," said Auror Gerald Patch, in a tone dripping with condescension toward Tina, who was of course, still a fresh recruit. "The underworld lives on lies, Goldstein. That's how they sell pixie dust and kneazle dung mixtures, promising it makes your dick big. It doesn't. Anyway, that old story gives No-Majs too much credit. We've got ourselves a fine Obliviation squad."

Patch's comments had rankled at Tina, but she knew better than to argue. She resolved to prove that she wasn't a wide-eyed naïve addition to the team. Sometimes she couldn't help but daydream about becoming the Director of Magical Security herself one day and assigning Patch and some of the others to tedious paperwork duties.

(Tina wanting to become Director had nothing to do with wishing to become some vengeful authority figure. It was something she always wanted as a kid, when she first met Auror Talon, Graves' predecessor. But that was a whole different story.)

When the Second Salem case fell in her lap, she couldn't help but wonder if it was somehow connected to the ancient underworld rumors.

If you've got yourself a shadowy No-Maj anti-magic cult, Tina pondered, wouldn't it be logical that it would be linked to Scourer descendants like Mary Lou Barebone?

The reality of the Second Salemers wasn't as glamorous, of course. Mary Lou Barebone wasn't some scheming No-Maj, but a zealot and a terrible mother.

But it was a tantalizing theory. Tina didn't want to let it go just yet, even if it seemed like it seemed like a dead end.

She decided to go knocking doors of former Second Salem members to see if it would yield anything. If she didn't get any results, she would close the case. Plus, busywork didn't hurt, especially because her mind was still whirling from what Credence Barebone told her earlier that day.

Isabel Hardy was the first person Tina visited. She was an elderly woman who had her grey hair tied in a neat bun, her brown dress a stern and formal style.

"Evening, Miss Hardy," Tina said. "I'm a reporter from _The New York World_ and I was hoping to talk to you about the New Salem Philanthropic Society, which I understand you're a part of-?"

"Was a part of, I'm afraid, girlie," Hardy said. "It's since shut down."

"Sorry to hear that," Tina said. She scrambled to find a good opening and said, "I was told something like that from Mary Lou Barebone's son Credence. But I was still hoping if I could get a story about your cause. For a feature on the, er, women's pages about family worries surrounding witchcraft and their children."

She had questioned No-Majs before while posing as a journalist and she occasionally received baffled stares. No-Maj women weren't traditionally investigative journalists—with the rare exception of Nellie Bly, for instance—and Tina learned to blend in by trying to frame a news story from a different angle.

She was endlessly frustrated that her mostly male Auror co-workers were able to seamlessly pose as No-Maj police officers. She couldn't request Polyjuice because of budget constraints and the general department attitude that you should be capable of doing canvassing without any aid except your own wits.

It was illegal to administer potions or cast truth spells or result to Legilimency for Auror interrogations of No-Majs. Exposing No-Majs to magic like that was major risk to the Statute of Secrecy and it added more unnecessary work to the Obliviation squad's caseload.

Isabel Hardy looked Tina up and down. Then she said, "All right, dear, come on in. If you don't mind me asking, how is the Barebone boy doing? I was curious where he went since he didn't go with his sisters to stay with Mabel. Modesty and Chastity came here to ask me for her address."

"Mabel?"

"Mabel Arden, another member of the Salemers," Hardy said. "To tell you the truth, she never went to meetings very often. Strange woman. If you want to get a quote from her for your story, I can give you her address, too."

"I would appreciate that," Tina said. Credence said Modesty and Chastity went to stay with 'family friends' – presumably, this Arden character?

For some reason, though, the name was ringing a bell in her head and she couldn't quite pinpoint why.

Hardy ushered Tina inside, and Tina took out a notepad and pencil she had tucked away in her pocket and started into the 'interview.'

* * *

When Tina visited the apartment Isabel Hardy told her about, there was no one there. In fact, it was completely empty, and when she approached the building superintendent, he told her those rooms had been vacant for months. No one had rented it.

The Second Salemers. Mabel Arden. Tina's brow furrowed in thought, and when she went home, the first thing she did was dig up an old Ilvermony textbook. Queenie tutted-tutted over the mess Tina was making inside the closet, but she seemed to sense Tina's fevered excitement.

There it was. _The_ _History of the Salem Witchcraft Trials and its Impact on American Society_.

Tina flipped through it. Eventually she found a No-Maj poem that she remembered studying. It was one of the documents that she had to analyze for her old History of Magic class.

Queenie hummed. "Oh! I remember that poem. It's very romantic. A love story, really."

"It's an account of a girl named Mabel whose mother was killed at Salem for being a witch," Tina said, her eyes scanning the lines. "And she marries a man named Esek Harden, with an _H_. That member of the Second Salemers is probably a descendant."

So Mabel Arden, like Mary Lou Barebone, had ancestral ties to the Salem Witch Trials. Yet Barebone was a clear Scourer descendent and Arden was likely a descendant of a witch who was set up by the Scourers. Why would she join an anti-magic group?

Tina puzzled it over, summoning a quill to underline the verses _She sat apart as one forbid, / Who knew that none would condescend /To own the Witch-wife's child a friend._

"I'm proud you made a breakthrough, Teenie," Queenie said. "But what's all this about time travel?"

* * *

They talked it over hot cocoa, like they usually did when it came to their long conversations, whether it was relating a story about work or chatting about their favorite radio dramas or reminiscing about their parents-anything and everything.

"So," Queenie began, "this boy from the anti-magic group you've been investigating _changed_ outta nowhere. And he told you it was because of time travel."

"I didn't believe it at first, either," Tina said, with a sigh. "But he showed me a couple of memories and I swear they weren't tampered with or anything."

She stared out into the distance, willing today's events to the forefront of her mind, welcoming Queenie to take a look.

"There's a horrible battle," Tina said, the pictures washing through her mind. "We're defending a castle. Hogwarts. Me and Credence, we're fighting back to back—he's not the best dueler, wandwork clumsy—and I'm doing my best to cover him. We were talking strategy, and he said that backup would be coming and then he'd deal with Grindelwald himself."

 _Backup_ turned out to be a man with wild sandy brown hair, who had swooped in from the sky mounting a dragon with an accompanying dragon horde behind him. He waved at them from atop a saddle, and Tina had seen herself in the memory call out: "Took you long enough, Newt!"

Tina felt her heart make a staccato jolt in her chest and she blushed, recalling what happened next.

"—you kissed him!" Queenie exclaimed. "You and this gentleman of yours _kissed_."

It had been an inelegant kiss, to be sure. The man—Newt?—tried to clamber down the dragon and tripped over the scales, and he was splayed face down across the dragon saddle.

Tina in the memory had laughed, and she'd Apparated up, catching him by his arm, tugging him back into sitting position on the saddle, and pulling him into a kiss.

Tina cleared her throat. "It's, well. It's not the point of the memory, Queenie. Credence's future looked hellish, an actual warzone, I mean, and then he showed me how the Time Turner whisked him away from his time."

"You want to help him," Queenie said. "But you know that he's not telling you everything."

"He's more magically adept than he appears," Tina said, and she frowned. "In that memory, his dueling form doesn't even hit standard Auror level. But he said he could take care of _Grindelwald_ and myself in the memory just accepted that.

"He also told me next to nothing about that girl Ariana, who he said he ended up saving when she was meant to die sometime in the past, and—what if he knows more about Mabel Arden and this Salem mystery?"

"You could just ask him," Queenie said, very reasonably. "And Teenie, please be careful, promise me."

Tina nodded automatically. Queenie had always been telling her that ever since she passed the Auror exams.

"For real, Tina," Queenie said, her voice unexpectedly more solemn, more grounded than the playful lilt she usually employed. "You have a big heart and you felt sorry for this boy ever since you met him. But things have changed—don't forget that time travel is illegal—and I know you'll be devastated if you lose your job or worse. Becoming Director is your dream."

"Won't be much of a dream if the world turns out like Credence's future," Tina said. She took a deep breath, exhaled, and said, "I know, Queen. I'll be careful."

"Good," Queenie said. She sipped her hot cocoa, then reached forward to squeeze Tina's hand.

* * *

Over the weekend, Tina busied herself with compiling the report she planned to submit to Director Graves. It was about the collapse of the New Salemers and the revelations about Mabel Arden. Tina was doing further reading on the Salem witchcraft trials, seeing if she could find anything more.

On Sunday, when Queenie was out with friends, Tina ducked out of the brownstone for some fresh air.

She found Credence Barebone outside with Ariana, sitting on the front steps.

"Your landlady wouldn't let me in," Credence said, ruefully. "Auror Goldstein, would you mind showing us around for wand shopping? If you're not busy. I'm not familiar with wizarding New York."

"Sure," Tina said. "If you won't mind answering some questions I have while we're out. You can't just drop 'I'm a time traveler' out of nowhere, you know."

"That's fair," Credence murmured, but there was something in his voice that made Tina certain he would still be on his mysteriousness high horse.

Which was ridiculous and frustrating all at once.

* * *

"MACUSA's strict with wand regulation," Tina said, after she had Side-Along Apparated them to her and Queenie's apartment so they could access their Floo. "You said that in the future, you left for Britain, right?"

"I had an Ollivander wand. Cyprus wood and phoenix feather."

Credence had liked it, but never felt too attached to it.

"It's not the same here," Tina said as she retrieved the Floo powder. "Here, once you're eleven, you get your wand at Ilvermony after the Sorting Ceremony. There's a big hall and the four wandmakers are there, surrounded by their creations, and you get to pick one or it picks you."

She held up her own wand.

"So you can't just walk into any shop and get a wand," Credence surmised.

"Children under seventeen usually aren't allowed to have wands outside of Ilvermony, either," Tina said, glancing at Ariana. "Lucky for you, I'm an Auror and I know where you can get wands and still legally get wand permits for them."

Tina cast a handful of powder into the fireplace and said, "Irving's Emporium," leaving Credence and Ariana to follow suit.

* * *

Credence tumbled out of the fireplace behind Ariana, green flames flashing behind him.

The first description that came to Credence's mind when he saw Irving's Emporium was _gaudy._

Because it was. The store was colorful and full of assorted knickknacks, stocked with flowing cloaks and blinking jewelry and wand holsters and spell books. The signs hanging on the wall alluded to the magical chaos caused by Grindelwald's attacks, promising security in the face of malicious magic.

 _Buy TRELL'S TINTURE,_ read a sign, with a picture of a blue bottle. _A potion that that provides essential protections against dangerous spells and_ _poisons_ _and also keeps you young and wrinkle-free while you're at it._

Magical America. Credence had never gotten the opportunity to get properly acquainted with it, since Grindelwald had obliterated most of it. Credence hadn't even had the chance to see Ilvermony.

Tina led the way through the winding shelves, ignoring the products whose claims seemed to get more outrageous the further you went. There was a doorway to a staircase at the corner of the store, and she said, "Down here."

They descended into a room that was crammed with boxes. A tall black man sat on a box, flipping through a book, and he made a face when Tina flashed her Auror badge.

"Another one? What did you do, lose your wand in a duel?" he scoffed. Nevertheless, he rolled up his sleeves and a tape measure went flying into his hand.

"Not for me," Tina said. She indicated Credence and Modesty. "Them, Mr. Irving."

"Look," Irving said, "I wager they're not Aurors themselves. I'm already treading fine legal lines having the Big Four's wands in my possession when I'm not any of the Four. Especially since these kids look underage—"

Tina rolled her eyes. "Mr. Irving, we know perfectly well that you sell those wands you've got to people who aren't Aurors, too, as long as they're willing to pay the right price. We only look the other way because we don't want to go through the hassle of individually seeking out the Four ourselves, one of whom hides out in a _swamp._ "

For Credence and Ariana's benefit, Tina expanded, "The four central wandmakers believe if you want a wand replacement, you've got to find them yourselves. It's some—complicated hero's journey tradition thing, but nobody wants to actually do it. Irving, here, though, has his ways of getting his hands on some excess wands not distributed at the Ilvermony ceremonies and it makes our lives much easier."

Credence bit back a grin. That enforced mysteriousness and privacy reminded him quite a bit of Albus in the early days. Before the Statute of Secrecy had fell and everything went wrong, Albus played the part of a respected and powerful wizard who focused on teaching and magical discoveries.

Of course, that was because Albus didn't want to get coaxed into the war with Grindelwald, not then.

Irving, on the other hand, looked affronted. "I went on a 'complicated hero's journey tradition thing' after I lost my wand years ago. It was worth it."

"And how many of the Four did you end up visiting until you found the right wand?" Tina asked, as if that settled the conversation.

"Three, across three different states, with three difficult tests or tasks they made me complete," Irving grumbled. He cleared his throat and said, "Fine. Alright, Auror lady, I'll wand up these kids."

He snapped his fingers and the tape measure whizzed toward Credence.

"Right-handed," Credence confirmed.

"Have you wielded a wand before? What wood and core?"

"Ollivander's. Cyprus wood and phoenix feather."

"Sounds like a Wolfe to me. Thunderbird cores are close to phoenix cores." Irving summoned a box from behind him and the cover flipped itself off. "Dig around. Give 'em a spin. Aim for one of the medium-sized ones."

Credence knelt down to feel around the wands scattered in the box, haphazardly piled on top of each other. It was quite a contrast to the neatly piled boxes he remembered seeing at Ollivander's.

As he felt around, he unexpectedly felt a wand warm in his hand. He clenched his hand over it and brought out a light brown wand with intricate carvings etched on its side.

The Obscurus reacted, clutching at something inside him and _twisting._ He gritted his teeth and suppressed it, soothing it with memories of phoenix fire, and when he looked at the wand in his hand, it was flickering with sparks of black lightning.

"Hemlock wood and thunderbird tail feather," Irving said. "There you go, kid. Now her turn."

Clear indecision shone on Ariana's face. Credence thought it might have to come to this, and he walked over to her and said in a hushed voice, "You don't have to."

"I was six years old," Ariana said. "Playing with a toy wand." Her hands were shaking.

"Breathe," Credence said, gently.

"Why is magic like this?" Ariana said, leaning forward to whisper into his ear. "It's in me and it's strong, but I _hate_ it, too. I want to shove it away, put it in a box, but it chokes me like there's a chain around my neck."

"I understand," Credence said. "I—I rarely used my old wand. I was scared, too, and I still am. Ariana, I only picked up a wand because your brother encouraged me to."

"He did?" Ariana said.

Credence huffed a soft laugh. "Yeah. I took up basic herbology when I stayed at Hogwarts, helping the professor tend to plants. It was slow, calming work and it reminded me when my sister Chastity and I set up and tended to a war garden."

Sometimes he still dreamed about the carrots he nicked from that garden, fresh and sweet. Sometimes he remembered how he and Chastity used to play together, their mother distracted with food drives and rallies and other things connected with the war effort and the effort to get Prohibition passed, giving her adopted children a brief respite of freedom.

And so, later, Albus had found Credence in one of the Hogwarts greenhouses.

"I was watering umbrella flowers, and Albus told me, _Credence, let's find you a wand so you can make a proper rainstorm for them,_ and I went. I went because of the flowers, or that was what I told myself back then."

"You flower boy. But that sounds quite like my brother," Ariana said, smiling. "You know—I'm jealous that you got to be taught like that. He was different with me."

"He was seventeen, eighteen, years of age, with you," Credence said, with a shake of his head. "He was forty-some years of age when I met him. He blamed himself for what happened to you, and he saw you nearly every time he looked at me. He wanted me to be you—I was always jealous of _you._ "

And maybe that was another reason why Credence didn't want to see Albus in this timeline. It was an Albus who never knew him, who would readily embrace the newly alive Ariana without the same affection toward Credence. Credence felt used and betrayed, the means for Ariana's survival and Grindelwald's defeat—

Credence was no ideologue, but it was still the right thing to do.

Meanwhile, Ariana stepped backward, a firm resolution in her eyes.

For the first time, Credence thought, she looked like Albus. Blue eyes blazing when he strode out to meet Grindelwald on the battlefield for the first time.

"I think," Ariana said, "my wand might have a Thunderbird feather core, too."

She rummaged through the still open box, fingers skimming over the wands. Nothing seemed to spark, and she withdrew from it with disappointment.

"You have a wand before?" Irving said, eyeing Ariana with curiosity.

She shook her head. "Never."

Tina, who had watched Credence and Ariana's huddled conversation with concern, knelt down next to Ariana on the floor.

"You said your mother had an American wand," she said. "Was it from one of the Four? Sometimes wand type runs through families."

"It was an old wand," Ariana said. "She said she made it herself."

"I bet you're of Native ancestry, kid," Irving said, thoughtfully. "A lot of the kids from the tribes back in the old days just used wandless magic, but Ilvermony made wands a rule. Those kids didn't want to take white man's wands, so they made their own and their kids kept doing it, too. You still see it sometimes, though it's not as common—a bunch of first years walking away from the wand choosing ceremony and trekking down the mountain to find the wood and core materials themselves.

"There might be bigshot Native wandmakers like Shikoba Wolfe now," Irving went on, "but his wands are for anyone of any color and they're not universal for kids of different tribes or nations."

Ariana made a quiet sound. "Mum barely talked about it. Sometimes she told people she was an Italian or Greek pureblood witch."

Ariana peered at the three remaining boxes nearby where the other wands were kept. She had a look on her face that Credence recognized as concentration during their Obscurus lessons, and her eyes seemed to go white for a full second.

It was so rapid that it was as if there had only been a trick of the light.

Ariana touched a box to the left of her. "That one."

What was that? Credence thought, bewildered. What had she used her Obscurus for? He had never done anything like that; for him, it was only a materialization of darkness, to be shaped and weaponized, not as a perceptive magical tool.

"Jonker," Irving said. "Mine, too. His are always long, so look for the shorter ones. Mother-of-pearl inlay with Wampus cat hair."

Ariana shuffled through the box, and it turned out that her hunch was right. She brought out a glistening bone white wand, which crackled with tufts of smoke that immediately dissolved.

Ariana grinned at Credence, bright excitement beaming on her face, and he nodded back at her.

Not only was she brave, she was brilliant. He'd have to prod her on what she did with her Obscurus when they got back to the rented apartment.

"Congratulations on your first wand," Tina said, and Irving good-naturedly echoed the compliment.

To pay for the wands, Credence made use of the dragots that Albus had left in the drawstring pouch, infinitely grateful that Albus had remembered American wizarding currency.

Then it was a matter of paperwork—"Fill out these forms, and copies will appear in the Wand Permit Office," thanks to the permissions that American Aurors granted to Irving, not wanting to go down to the office themselves—and Credence wrote in the false details for the backstory he had constructed for himself and Ariana.

Hopefully it would hold up.

* * *

Irving disappeared upstairs to attend a customer, leaving Credence to finish the paperwork and Tina and Ariana waiting, when-

"Don't tell me you needed a new wand after the first couple months on the job, Teenie," a familiar warm voice said, and Tina turned to see Director Graves at the doorway.

He looked like he usually did. Pristine long coat, dark hair neatly combed into place, a confident air radiating about him.

"Afternoon, Mr. Graves. The wand isn't for me, sir," Tina said, pushing down her initial flustered feelings. Oh, Mercy Lewis, of course he of all people would be here right now.

Suddenly, she noticed Ariana duck behind a tower of boxes in the room, managing to escape Graves' attention, and Credence shook his head in a tight movement when Tina met his gaze in bafflement.

But he stayed visible, apparently fine with an introduction.

Right. Another thing he would have to explain later.

"The wand's for me," Credence said, dipping his head in greeting. "I'm Credence Barebone, Director Graves. Auror Goldstein was doing me a favor. I was with the Second Salemers and she wanted to help me out."

"The Second Salemers-the anti-magic No-Maj group," Graves said, eyebrows raised. "Sounds like quite the story."

"I included it in the report I'll be giving you tomorrow," Tina said, though she'd written no such thing. She had no idea what cover story Credence was thinking of employing and she had been focusing on the Arden/Barebone/Salem material the whole time.

In hindsight, she should have planned this out better. Tina tried not to wince.

Credence intervened, his wand hand twitching slightly, but his tone soft and steady. "It's nothing much, Director Graves. Mary Lou Barebone of the Salemers raised me and somehow I slipped through the cracks."

"You never attended Ilvermony, you mean to say-?"

"No, sir," Credence said. "I only discovered that I was a wizard a couple years ago. After the Muggle Great War ended, my adoptive mother sent me and other Salemers to the Continent to spread word about her anti-witch crusade. It was in London where I met a kindly wizard who told me what I was and informally mentored me."

Picking up the thread of the story, Tina said, "Er, yes—Credence returned home recently and convinced his mother to shut down the organization, which is how I met him when working on the case."

Graves was silent, then said, "I know I shouldn't be saying this, but you did us quite the favor, then, Mr. Barebone. MACUSA has been concerned about these radical No-Majs, and we've got enough to worry about with all this Grindelwald business. But, you understand, I trust that your methods of convincing your mother—"

"I know about the Statute of Secrecy," Credence said. "I promise you that I've never raised my wand against her. I didn't even have my wand at the time—I lost it on the voyage here; it was an Ollivander wand—which is why I've bought a new one now."

Every word of Credence said then, Tina deduced, was the truth, but she had a feeling that he was stretching it.

It seemed to satisfy Graves at the moment. He quirked a smile at Tina. "I take it you've been busy writing your report since you didn't come in after your stakeout of the Salemers."

"I was chasing leads, Mr. Graves," Tina said, relieved to being treading away from the more dangerous waters ( _damned_ time traveler). "I was asking around about the Salemers and I think I found something interesting."

Credence looked at Tina, and now it was Tina's turn to give him a minute shake of her head.

"So what brings you to Irving's, anyway, sir?" Tina asked. "You're not here for a wand, are you?"

Graves snorted. "Gordian, no. That would be a nightmare. If I needed a new wand, I'd feel obligated to seek out the Four myself. No, I'm here because Irving's a fair hand for protective enchantments, despite all the useless knickknacks he sells, and I'm consulting about ward maintenance issues."

Tina engaged Graves with polite, meandering small talk about MACUSA co-workers and ward upkeep—Credence busied himself once more with the wand paperwork—until Graves excused himself for his appointment with Irving.

"Looking forward to your report on Monday, Teenie," he said in farewell. "And nice meeting you, kid."

When Graves was gone, Credence looked up from the paperwork. Ariana emerged from behind the boxes, her new wand clutched tightly in her hand and her blond hair ruffled across her forehead in disarray.

"I've never met him before," Credence said, his tone thoughtful. "Percival Graves."

* * *

"You said you sent your sisters to live with family friends," Tina said. "I asked Isabel Hardy and she said they went to find Mabel Arden. I couldn't track her down, but she has ties to the Salem witch trials. Who is she, Credence? Where are Modesty and Chastity?"

Grindelwald, Credence thought, was definitely a bastard for demoting Tina in his old timeline. She was honestly—truly—a good Auror, and he liked that his arrival in this time would prevent her from being kicked downstairs, since she wouldn't be put in a position to defend him from Mary Lou Barebone.

Even if it was an inconvenience.

"I don't know where they are," Credence said, truthfully.

"And?"

Credence said, "It's not my story to tell. Leave it alone, Tina. If there's a danger, I'll take care of it, but for now, I think my sisters are safe."

He had decided to let the Scourers remain unexposed for now. Tina was unable to get anything more out of him, even the reason why he'd told Ariana to hide from Percival Graves, and Tina left the diner they had gathered to eat lunch at with a scowl on her face.

"If you're keeping secrets," Ariana said, "you have to be careful, you know. She could change her mind and arrest us."

"I don't like it, either, but I don't want to earn the Scourers' ire," Credence said, finishing his cup of tea. "Would you be alright staying home alone tonight? I can leave Fawkes with you, but there's something I have to do."

"Bring him if you're using your Obscurus," Ariana said.

She wasn't wrong.

* * *

The Graves estate in upstate New York wasn't difficult to find.

In the early hours of morning, the house was cast in a pall of grey, gloomy and dark right before sunrise. A row of trees lined the pathway, the last orange brown leaves of autumn slowly swaying in the wind.

Credence stood in the shadow of a tree, Fawkes perched on his shoulder.

In 1926, when Credence was in London with Newt before he resided at Hogwarts, Newt had showed him an article in _The New York Ghost_. It had a picture of this estate, this house in black-and-white, American Aurors milling about in the foreground.

Credence closed his eyes, breathed, and did his utmost to mimic Ariana's trick.

 _We're Obscurials,_ she told him, when she explained to him what she had done at Irving's Emporium. _We know how magic feels like inside of us, how it gets twisted because of the Obscurus. Ever si_ _nce I was little—after I was six_ _—sometimes I could feel outside magic in people and things. It's like_ seeing _, but not with your eyes._

She told him about the days she spent lying in bed, feeling the saturation of Kendra and Aberforth Dumbledore's day-to-day magic and Albus' chaotic experiments.

 _It's like the Obscurus wants to eat that magic, too,_ she said. _But it knows it can't._

Credence had tried it for hours with Ariana before he left, and he found that he couldn't replicate the ability like her. He would get flashes, recognition of outside magic, but it fluctuated too quickly for him to register.

Ariana was more in tune with magic sensitivity than him.

Standing outside the Graves estate, Credence reached for the lens, the Obscurial sense—and it slipped from his grasp again.

But he _could_ do it in his Obscurial form. He realized that it was an instinct he already had, seeing without real eyes, able to dodge the flow of magic curses in battle.

He submerged himself completely.

This place was alive with magic. It was like looking straight into the center of the sun, the brightness pricking your eyes and making it sting, and Credence sensed the wards across the estate-and he detected a shimmer in the distance where the wards were breached.

There was only one other magical person on the premises. They emitted a faint, fading signature.

Credence barreled through the estate's wards, Fawkes trailing behind him. The wards were made of old magic and strong magic, but with the existing hole, they shattered like glass upon the Obscurial's impact, wisps of light falling from the sky to the earth.

Credence—the Obscurial form that was Credence—stopped over a spot in the back gardens.

He reformed his body. Fawkes whistled urgently. Credence swallowed back the urge to reply, _Yes, I know._

He withdrew his new wand, the etchings on the wood making his grip shaky, and he blasted downward at the ground underneath him.

Soil and grass splattered upward, coating him in dirt and green stalks, but he didn't bother to brush it off and kept digging.

* * *

"He's awake, Credence."

Credence was hunched over a book he had taken from Graves' library in the mansion. It was an ancient book, obviously passed down through the family, and Credence wanted to ensure that the wards—now back in place—wouldn't break again.

A couple of hours ago, he had found Percival Graves stuffed into an old trunk buried in the back gardens. Graves was heavily bleeding, in shock from the effects of the Cruciatus, and disoriented because of Grindelwald's Legilimency attacks on him.

In Credence's old timeline, Graves died after several days in that trunk. His body hadn't been recovered until a week after Grindelwald's short lived imprisonment.

Credence had installed Ariana to keep watch over the wounded man, and now he got up.

"Let's have a talk with Mr. Graves," he said. "I take it he has a lot of questions."

Ariana nodded, then paused. "I thought you told me to run or hide if I ever saw him."

"Not him," Credence said. "The dark wizard I told you about who will be impersonating him. It was good luck that you hid last time, Ariana. He would've seen you after viewing all of Graves' memories."

Grindelwald, he knew, would immediately recognize Ariana and work toward using her as a weapon.

Credence wasn't surprised that once he walked into the master bedroom, he was attacked by a pair of chairs, two pieces of furniture flying toward him. He sidestepped them, _Finite_ 'd the burst of magic with a wave of his wand.

"I'm not the man who attacked you, Mr. Graves," he said, visibly shrugging his wand back in his coat pocket.

Graves' right hand was raised in strained effort; he lay in bed, bloodied bandages on his bare chest and his face screwed in pain. "You're the kid who was at Irving's yesterday. Barebone."

Ariana stepped out from behind the door, which she had sheltered behind to avoid the chairs. "And I didn't get to tell you my name yet. Ariana."

Graves frowned and said, "What the hell happened? Where's Grindelwald? What're you doing here?"

Ariana stilled at the mention of Grindelwald's name and Credence thought, _oh, Merlin_.

"Credence," she said.

"I didn't want to tell you right away," Credence said with a sigh. "Yes. Gellert's the dark wizard who much of the wizarding world is at war with."

She dashed out of the room, her body a flickering blur.

Credence whistled, and Fawkes appeared. He said, "Stay with her. If she changes, tell me and I'll go to her," and Fawkes vanished in a flash of fire.

Graves looked baffled by the entire exchange. "What witch or wizard doesn't know about Grindelwald, Barebone?"

"It's a long story," Credence said. "Her brother used to be friends with Grindelwald a long time ago. My fault, really. She told me to be careful about keeping secrets."

"Well," Graves said, "this is all fascinating, but I have to Floo to MACUSA at once—" He tried to sit up, but then let out a groan of pain and collapsed on the bed.

"You will not," Credence said. "Grindelwald is at MACUSA now, wearing your face, and I'm planning on taking him down myself."

"My face-? Of course, he was rifling through my memories."

"Yes," Credence said. "He's searching for the source of mysterious attacks that have been happening this year and thinks he'd have a better chance posing as you."

"Well, tough luck for him, because I'm not dead," Graves said. "And you're definitely not taking him on by yourself, because this is _my_ job, kid. I need a team of Aurors—"

Credence stifled the urge to reach for his wand, and in the end, he sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He said, "I wasn't going to save you, you know."

"I rescued you," Credence grasped for the words, "-on a whim, to tell you the truth. Tina likes you, and I realized that I need someone to keep an eye on Ariana while I'm out baiting Grindelwald. Stay put behind the estate wards for the meantime."

"Let me get this straight," Graves said. "You want to let Gellert Gordian-accused Grindelwald run around impersonating _me_ , causing who knows what trouble—you want to place me on house arrest in my own _house_ —and you want me to play babysitter to this girl?"

This was slightly more trying than talking to Albus Dumbledore when he was in one of his overly whimsical moods.

"Yes," Credence said. "I reinstated the wards, adding an additional security layer technique that hasn't been officially invented yet. It should keep out Grindelwald for now. I also revoked outgoing exit or Apparition permissions from you. And the Floo's locked."

"…You're joking."

"It might be helpful to know that Ariana's the dark creature that Grindelwald is looking for," Credence said. It was technically true, in a way. "You're not being entirely useless."

"Dark creature," Graves repeated. "She's a child." Then realization dawned on his face. "An Obscurial. You can't expect me to guard an Obscurial. Didn't you say she has a brother? Why can't she stay with him?"

"Because she doesn't want to accidentally kill him or her other brother."

"And what about me?"

Credence raised an eyebrow.

"You should have left me in that hole in the ground," Graves said bleakly.

"She's learning to manage it," Credence said. "Although I have to talk to her about Gellert at the moment before she explodes the house."

* * *

He found her curled up underneath a tree in the back gardens of the house, looking listlessly up at the orange leaves and the blue morning sky. Fawkes had settled on one of the above branches, chirruping little songs.

"Gellert and Albus promised to take me traveling around the world," Ariana said. "Aberforth didn't want me to go, and that duel—I'm not surprised that it went wrong. But I didn't think he would—"

Ariana's voice cut off. Helplessly, she said, "Credence, he loved my brother."

Credence was quiet. Albus and Grindelwald had a breadth and depth of history that Credence could never quite comprehend; it was more complicated than his own unusual relationships with the both of them.

Of course they still loved each other. Across battlefields, they called each other by their first names with a breathtaking fondness in their eyes, and when they looked at each other, they were seeing each other from decades ago, two boys whispering to each other of their ambitions and their hopes for the future.

But the _tragedy_ of those two wasn't the whole picture.

"Gellert," Credence said, "won't stop. My future was a never-ending war that left the world in ruins and thousands dead. He wanted to use me as a weapon. If you go to him now, he would make you fight for him until you died from overuse of your Obscurus. Ariana, _he_ _doesn't care._ He makes you think he does, but it's never about you, it's about the greater good. His aspirations to become the highest power, the Master of Death and beyond."

"He promised that I'd be free, one day," Ariana said. "That I wouldn't have to hide, that he and Albus would make a newer and better world."

"He promised me that, too," Credence murmured.

"He's right that Muggles have hurt us."

"Cruelty isn't limited to only Muggles," Credence said. "I'm not a strong defender either way when it comes to this old argument, Ariana, but your brother was—is—very much for Muggle rights. Remember that wizards invented the Cruciatus, the spell that Gellert used repeatedly on Mr. Graves. Wizards slaughter magical creatures and beings simply because they fear them. They put people in prison to slowly and painfully die, surrounded by Dementors."

At the last one, Ariana flinched. Credence felt a lurch of guilt—he knew that Ariana's father died in Azkaban—but he pressed on.

"In my timeline, when they saw what I was, MACUSA almost killed me," Credence said. "Gellert thinks exactly like my mother. Everything is about the magical against the non-magical, with the good people on one side and the bad people on the other."

"And that does sound like nonsense," Ariana said, quietly. "Because it's too easy."

"Then you understand," Credence said. Then he asked, "Can I trust you, Ariana?"

Startled, she looked up, her blue eyes blinking. "Of course you can, flower boy. You're still my brother's friend, even if he doesn't know you now, and you're helping me with my Obscurus. You're—you're protecting me and you don't treat me like I'm a wild bludger about to knock you in the head."

"Not a bludger," Credence agreed, with a slight smile.

He said, "Ariana, I have a request for you. Mr. Graves has to stay in this place so he doesn't get out and interrupt what I'm doing with Grindelwald. Keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't tamper with the wards or the Floo. Keep him distracted. You can ask him to teach you how to use magic with your new wand."

"Yeah," Ariana said, a slow smile stretching across her face, "I can do that."


	3. Chapter 3

Before the war, Credence used to take night flights with Fawkes: fire and shadow soaring above the Hogwarts castle and the Forbidden Forest, streaking past the stars like they were a comet.

He thought of those flights, now, while waiting in the MACUSA department hallway that was called The Planetarium.

It was officially the corridor that led to MACUSA's Department of Mysteries. It was called The Planetarium because that was what it was—there was a long glass ceiling that gave a view of shifting stars, galaxies running across its length, and it reminded him, too, of the Great Hall in Hogwarts.

But here, the ceiling was lower, sloping at the edges, and it was almost as if you could touch it and pluck a star from the sky.

He felt-maudlin. Almost nostalgic.

Once, he had dueled Grindelwald under a starry-filled sky, and then they'd stopped to talk, for an inexplicable reason that neither of them could exactly say out loud.

 _"Have you heard of Naming Seers?"_

 _Credence shook his head._

 _"It's an ancient tradition. Many of the old families still do it. They summon a Seer after childbirth, and the Seer_ _looks into the future and names the child based on what they saw._

 _"Your name, though of Muggle origins, does suit you. Credence. My boy of belief and faith, at least in the beginning."_

 _"_ _Gellert_ _," Credence said, then corrected himself, "_ _Grindelwald_ _—"_

 _"_ _Shh_ _, let me finish. Last night, I dreamed of your true name. If you were named the old way through a Naming Seer, if you grew up with your real mother instead of that Muggle. Your true name—"_

 _And he whispered into the shell of Credence's ear._

There were many things that Credence had left out telling Ariana about him and Grindelwald in the future. It wasn't anything concrete, anything real, but it was a mess of _something_ , and oftentimes it made Credence want to engulf the surface of the earth in blackness because of how it defied definition.

Credence waited underneath the sky of The Planetarium, and he heard Graves—no, Grindelwald—say behind him, "Auror Goldstein said that you had something important to tell us about a case."

Credence's eyes didn't leave the shape of a black hole above him.

"I'm a Seer," Credence said. "I know when that dark creature will attack again."

* * *

Grindelwald ushered Credence into Graves' office with a carefully composed expression on his face.

It was strange to see Percival Graves' features on Grindelwald. There was a more narrowed, harsh way in how he squinted and furrowed his brow; everything he did was deliberate, compared to how careless and flippant Graves was, lightly calling Credence _kid_ and Tina _Teenie_ _,_ employing American wizarding swears at the drop of a hat.

"You have to understand that I can't take this claim seriously without proof," Grindelwald said, leaning toward Credence from his desk. "We do recruit Seers in our Department of Mysteries as a rule, but they're mostly there for research purposes. Generating the occasional prophecy and seeing what sticks."

There was a slight sneer on his face. Credence wasn't surprised. Of course Grindelwald would look down at government-recruited Seers who shared their visions and didn't try to make them part of some grander purpose.

"I've had strange dreams ever since I was a child, Mr. Graves," Credence said, quietly. "I've felt the Inner Eye, in my chest, in my breath. It's always felt dangerous, but very real."

"But you must know that not all prophecies come to pass."

"Unless you make them come true or take them apart yourself."

There was a gleam in Grindelwald's dark eyes, which Credence was used to seeing in his usual blue eyes. "Indeed. So tell me, what did you see about this dark creature?"

"It looks like a storm," Credence said. "Tonight at Prospect Park. That's all I can remember, Mr. Graves."

* * *

Casting a _Lumos_ spell was one of the first times that Ariana had ever used her own magic to make light.

It had taken one single spoken word, and her wand tip glowed yellow. Ariana stared at it, and Graves said, "Well done," and she smiled.

If only Albus and Aberforth were here to see her do magic.

Graves cleared his throat, interrupted her thoughts. "So, you're really an Obscurial."

Ariana had noticed that Graves was apparently tiptoeing around the matter all morning. Looked like Credence had told him. She wondered if he was scared of her, and she thought if he was, that was absurd. He was the Director of Magical Security at MACUSA, and she was just fourteen.

"I am," she said. "I've been practicing how to control it, so I don't think I'll hurt you."

She shut her eyes and tried to copy the trick Credence did when he met her: blooming flowers from his fingertips. She managed one flower, a faint cloudy semblance of a daisy that sank back into her palm.

"Pretty little thing," Graves said, gently taking her palm into his to study the fading impression of the flower. "That's remarkable."

Ariana was surprised. "You think so? I know I can be much scarier when I'm in full form and I'm angry."

"It doesn't take much to scare me," Graves said, trying to draw his posture upward, but wincing due to his injuries. "Well. I suppose after getting personally tortured by Grindelwald himself, there's not much to be scared of anymore."

Grindelwald. It was strange, hearing Gellert being mentioned like this, connecting him to the terrifying dark wizard that Credence said that Albus opposed in his future.

To think that he used to be a slender sixteen-year-old boy with curly blond hair who kissed her brother when they thought she wasn't looking.

She thought about what Credence said about Gellert using her as a weapon, and she shivered, tried to push the idea from her mind.

"Mr. Graves," she said, wishing for a distraction, "can you tell me about Ilvermony? My mum went there but she never talked about it."

"Hmm, Ilvermony? I was a Wampus. There's four houses, and Wampus is the best house, of course."

"Four houses like Hogwarts," Ariana said. "My brothers are—were, I suppose—Gryffindors. They said that was the best house, too, because that means you're brave. My father was in Gryffindor before them."

Oh. She wondered why she thought of him, then, because she always tried her best to forget him. Maybe because Credence had brought him up.

She said, "His name was Percival, too."

"'Percival' is a fine name," Graves said, very seriously. "You said _was_ —I'm sorry for your loss."

Ariana let out an aborted laugh. "One of my brother's middle names is Percival after him. And it's all right, you needn't say any condolences. My father died in Azkaban."

"I see," Graves said, somber, and he seemed to understand that she didn't want to talk about it anymore. "I can tell you more about Illvermony. I hear that you Brits get sorted with a hat. We have something called the Gordian's Knot…"

* * *

Credence was waiting outside the Woolworth Building when Tina emerged, his eyes distant and unfocused. He didn't quite see her when he saw her.

"Thank you," he said, "for the introduction."

"He doesn't usually believe in Seers being roped in for cases," she said, frowning. "I wonder what changed his mind."

Credence felt... weary, exhausted, and struck with a deep sense of sadness that was unfathomable. He was reacquainting himself with Grindelwald again, no longer dark meetings in alleyways, no longer tense confrontations on battlefields, and despite his attempt at a plan, he thought that he was floundering.

He realized that he couldn't do this alone.

Instead of answering Tina, Credence took her by the arm, and Apparated them to the Graves estate.

They appeared in the sitting room. Graves and Ariana were talking—Graves explaining basic Transfiguration and Ariana said something about her brother.

"Mr. Graves," Tina said, in surprise.

Graves' state was notably still battered. He wore a button-up shirt, but traces of blood bled through the white fabric. "Tina," he said. "I trust that you might be able to free me. As delightful as Miss Ariana may be."

"Not at the moment," Credence said. "Tell each other about the current situation. Time travel, Ariana as an Obscurial, Grindelwald impersonating Graves. Ariana, come—let's have another lesson."

Ariana nodded, went to Credence's side.

* * *

Graves and Tina exchanged glances. Tina took a seat in the chair that Ariana vacated, wishing that she could have a coffee.

"It seems like we have a lot to talk about," Graves said. "First of all, who on earth is that boy?"

"The backstory he gave you at Irving's was a load of dragon dung," Tina admitted. "He's a time traveler, sir."

She told him about Credence's memories, and the way he irritated her by being enigmatically vague.

In return, Graves told her about being attacked by Grindelwald, and subsequently being put in an enforced lockdown in his own house alongside Ariana.

Tina did her best to digest all the information like this was an ordinary case. When she was a kid during the summers between Ilvermony school years, Auror Talon—later Director Talon—used to drop by to tell her about his cases sometimes, the complicated twists and turns of them. But it was never _this_ complicated.

"I owe Barebone a life debt," Graves said, his tone grudging. "And I see the merit in safeguarding that girl, so Grindelwald doesn't get his hands on her. But I fail to see what Barebone's grand scheme is in all this. I'm willing to look the other way for _time travel_ , if he's doing this in service of opposing Grindelwald, but I have no idea what he's up to otherwise. I have to, at the very least, warn President Piquery about Grindelwald."

"I doubt you'd get very far if you do that," Credence said, who walked in just then. "Grindelwald has some of his people inside MACUSA. In my timeline, they helped him escape after MACUSA captured him. There's no point in involving MACUSA any further."

"Even if there's Aurors that I absolutely trust?"

"Word spreads around," Credence said. Finally, sounding reluctant, he said, "If you want to take down Grindelwald's followers within MACUSA, there is an outside party that you can approach, but I don't think they would trust you."

"Arden," Tina said out loud, remembering.

"Scourers," Credence said, with an uncertain look on his face. "I don't know where to find them. They likely went deeper underground after I sent my sisters to live with them."

"I've heard the rumors about them, too," Graves murmured. "No-Maj secret society that's creeping on the magical community. Every investigation of them has never checked out."

"They're very good at what they do," Credence said. "They've managed to obtain magical artifacts to make up for their lack of magic, and the way they fight is modeled on how to combat magic users. Theseus Scamander told me he thought they have contact with the American magical underworld."

Graves said, "A No-Maj fighting style that counteracts magic users—?"

Tina heard the sudden recognition in his voice. "Sir?"

"It's been twenty years for me," Graves said. "But I know the organization that invented that style."

* * *

The American wizarding community built upward on top of existing No-Maj skyscrapers. There were spiraling residencies that climbed toward the sky, invisible to No-Maj eyes, and it was one such residency where Graves led Tina and Ariana, looking, Tina thought, distinctly uncomfortable for the first time she could remember him.

They stood in an elevator where Graves keyed in a sequence of floor numbers, and immediately, it shot upward.

Tina used to live in a high-rise wizarding complex like this with Queenie and their parents, a long time ago. She remembered the curved staircase that led to their doorstep and how she and Queenie used to dash across the steps. The last day she remembered being in the apartment, Tina had answered the door and Healers rushed in, and then, later, Aurors…

She told herself to forget about it. Queenie didn't even remember it, not completely, and she still believed Tina when she told her: _The Healers found both our parents dead from_ _dragonpox_ _._

The elevator let out a ringing sound, alerting them it had reached its destination. Graves wore a hat to obscure his face, tipped slightly forward, and he adjusted it now when the gate opened.

This wizarding complex was crammed with balconies, one on top of another. It was nothing like the Graves estate, a wealthy house sequestered out upstate, and Tina couldn't help but wonder how someone like Percival Graves, scion of the Graves family, knew of a place like this.

"Tina," Graves said, "you must promise me that you won't report any activities that you might hear or see here. We're here to ask for the location of the Scourers and nothing else."

Tina, who had underworld contacts herself and knew the need for them, said, "I understand, sir."

"I'll keep quiet, too," Ariana volunteered, and Graves ruffled her hair with a smile, making her scowl and bat his hand away. "I'm fourteen, not four, Mr. Graves."

"My apologies, then, Ariana."

Graves started walking, glancing around. Grindelwald had stolen his wand, but he carried an old family wand that he had told Tina worked decently but not perfectly.

"Hey, kid," Graves said to a boy who was skulking in the corner. "Let Risa know I'm coming."

The boy was freckled and he had unruly red hair that peeked out from underneath a flat cap. "That depends," he said. "Who's asking?"

"Tell her it's Percy and two, ah, guests. I'm not here to cause trouble."

The boy in the flat cap Disapparated on the spot, twisting in a black flare.

He was, Tina thought, too young to Apparate and should be in school, but she remembered what Graves told her and decided it was a minor thing in the long run.

When the boy appeared once again, there was a newfound caution across his face. "She said you can come on in. Same place as the old days. I can side-along with her," he pointed to Ariana, "and you can take her," he pointed to Tina.

"Alright," Graves said. He placed a hand on Tina's shoulders and again, Tina saw the lurking apprehensiveness in his eyes. "Brace yourself, Teenie."

They appeared before an apartment, and Tina felt a dizzying rush of acrophobia, because she realized that it was on the very top of the structure.

It was the last balcony situated over all the others.

"Welcome to the Crow's Nest," the boy in the flat cap said, lifting his hand away from Ariana's forearm and opening the door. "Hope Risa doesn't kill you, Mr. Percy."

It was, on first impression, an apartment that resembled a No-Maj funhouse. There were mirrors on the walls and on the ceiling, and you got the feeling that there should be some on the floor, too, although that would be inconvenient.

On closer inspection, Tina saw that the mirrors didn't show reflections. The shining surfaces were instead covered with images of doors: the front door to the Crow's Nest, the elevator door they had emerged from, the door to the No-Maj building below this complex, and strangely, doors to places Tina passingly knew as wizarding hospitals and medical clinics.

The woman who was watching the mirrors—the doors—stood in the middle of the room, her arms folded across her chest. She was middle-aged, older than Graves, her hair a mousy brown that was turning white. She wore blood red witch's robes, intricate layers that swept down to her feet.

"Haven's form has spread," Graves said. He pressed a hand against a shimmering mirror. "Who's been teaching Scourer descendants how to fight? I thought you told me once that the best hope for Haven to survive is to keep your heads down. These Scourers are keeping to a feud that dates back to Salem, for Gordian's sake."

"MACUSA is no different, Percy," Risa said. She looked at him and smiled. "I hope it wasn't foolish of me to invite you in. I _have_ missed you."

"You missed beating me in duels, you old woman," Graves said.

"I bet that I can still beat you, especially because you're out of practice," she said, serenely. "Introduce me to your friends, Percy."

"Tina," Graves said. "One of my Aurors, but you can trust her. And this is Ariana."

"Your daughter?"

"No," Ariana said, wrinkling her nose.

Risa laughed. "Yes, that's the appropriate reaction." Graves glowered, but that only made her laugh harder.

"Miss," Tina said, cutting in, "we're here about the Scourers. We don't want to arrest them, but to see if we can make—overtures. MACUSA is compromised and I was told they would somehow know how to recognize certain agents."

Credence had said that in his future, the Scourers he allied with were able to detect Grindelwald's spies if they tried to mingle within the American refugee camp. It was a method beyond any usual magical means like a spell or Veritaserum; Credence had suggested that it was a rare magical artifact the Scourers had stolen that could be tweaked to recognize enemies. Tina had never heard of anything like it before, but after Credence had showed both her and Graves a memory, they agreed to look for the Scourers.

"Grindelwald's people, you mean," Risa said, knowledgeably. "The anti-No-Maj sentiment he's been spouting is an ugly mess. It makes things tougher for us."

"What is this place anyway?" Ariana asked. "Mr. Graves said it's called 'Haven.'"

Risa said, "We keep families together, little one."

Tina was hit by a revelation. She'd heard of this place from her underworld contacts but never went looking for it since it wasn't related to any of her cases. "This is where mixed-magic families hide."

Under Rappaport's law, No-Majs and wizards and witches couldn't marry or befriend each other. MACUSA's Obliviation squad worked to Obliviate No-Majs who were found to be too close to wizards and witches.

"Oh, yes," Risa said. She gestured to the mirrors around her. "Mixed-magic families seek us out, or we seek them out. Some of my people work at New York magical clinics and hospitals, and they alert me if a child of non-magical and magical parentage is born. We give families the option to stay with us, or wait for the Obliviation squad who will inevitably come knocking to Obliviate one of the child's parents."

Risa's eyes flashed as she explained this, and Tina felt a sharp sensation in her chest. It was true that MACUSA's law was harsh, but Tina knew where it was coming from. It was in all the history books—the Dorcas Twelvetrees and Bartholomew Barebone affair—and she knew the danger of No-Majs like Mary Lou Barebone. Even if Mary Lou Barebone wasn't a true security breach, her awareness of magical society was too close for comfort.

This had to make sense in some way.

"We can't catch them all, of course," Risa added, quietly. "Not all children are born in magical hospitals. We don't have the resources to track No-Maj hospitals or home births, and there's always other cases we miss. Because our focus is usually on mixed-magic families with children, we can't do much if wizard or witch dates a No-Maj and their neighbor calls the Obliviation squad on them. We also can't completely stop MACUSA from relocating No-Maj-borns or trace-majs."

It was the general way American magical society functioned, Tina reflected. Pureblood politics didn't quite carry over from Britain, but a form of it still lived on.

You were in good standing if both of your parents were magical, whether they were pureblood or No-Maj-born. Your social status was also in good standing if you were No-Maj-born yourself. In American magical society, No-Maj-borns were usually caught early on and they were adopted by magical parents or raised in wizarding orphanages.

But being a half-blood, that mean being born as the result of a _crime._ Half-blood children weren't supposed to technically exist.

"Trace-majs?" Ariana asked, frowning.

"You Brits call them squibs," Graves said. "MACUSA law requires for trace-majs to be relocated into No-Maj society, not raised in a magical household." He said it briskly, stiffly, like he was reciting the legislation himself, and the light-heartedness that was in his tone earlier had disappeared.

"At Haven," Risa said, with a strange, brittle smile, "you learn the different ways families can be broken. It takes a lot of daring for MACUSA employees to come visit. After turning your back on us, Percy—"

"You know who my father was, Risa, and how he was like," Graves said sharply. "I've kept my Aurors and the Obliviation squad clear of this place as best as I can, but I can't move the heavens for you and get Rappaport's law revoked. _Enough._ Just give us the information we need and we'll leave."

"You're a coward," Risa said. She narrowed her eyes. "Fine. I'll tell you where the Scourers are if you duel me one last time."

Tina felt the urge to protest—this didn't sound like a good idea at all, especially considering Graves was still recovering from Grindelwald's attack.

But Graves nodded. "I'll duel you."

* * *

Graves didn't look worried. He was patiently explaining to Ariana how quick-duels were carried out, kneeling down to guide her hand on her wand in demonstration.

"Quick-duels aren't like formalized duels with rules," Graves said. "It's actually—illegal, because if it's deadly, someone gets killed within the first minute. The victor is whose _Avada_ lands accurately first."

He set Ariana's wand against her side and mimed it being sheathed in a wand holster. Then he pulled her arm to snap up forward, arm sweeping in a straight line.

"Risa and I aren't playing a fatal quick-duel," Graves said. "None of the Unforgivables are allowed. The winner is the dueler who lands the first spell the fastest and it's sufficiently disabling. If nobody lands a hit—or it's not disabling enough—we draw our wands again for the next round."

"I see," Ariana said, and she mimed the action herself: wand shrugged into an imaginary holster, then rapidly withdrawn. "I hope you win. I'd like to learn more about dueling like this."

"You're a bad influence," Tina said to Graves, with a sigh. She motioned for Ariana to put her wand away.

"Not really," Ariana said. "I almost got killed by running into the middle of a duel and it seems wise to learn how to win one." She gave Tina a mischievous smile, then darted off when the boy in the flat cap—Jaren, Tina had learned his name—called over to her.

Graves was unabashed. He said to Tina, "Her reasoning is quite sound. I learned quick-dueling when I was eight."

"You grew up here," Tina said. Realizing that was probably the wrong thing to say to her boss, almost accusatory, she flushed.

"No, you're right," Graves said, steadily. A grim smile flitted over his face. "My father was already married to a witch when he met my mother, a No-Maj. She didn't want to get separated from me and we lived here awhile, just the two of us. When I was eleven, I went to Ilvermony on my father's request. I kept coming back to Haven until I was in my twenties, but eventually, my mother missed her No-Maj family. She told my father to Obliviate her.

"And thus…my father passed me off as his official heir, and I followed his and my grand-ancestors' footsteps into MACUSA. And here I am twenty years later."

"I am," Graves said, sardonic, self-deprecating, and still smiling, "a half-blood. But you are too, aren't you?"

Tina felt as if the wind had been knocked from her lungs. Her eyes wide, she said, "How did you—?"

"I guessed," Graves said, reaching over to tuck a stray hair behind her ear. His hands were coarse, wand-worn from quick-duels and battles on the job. "You're like me, Teenie. You look at older No-Maj women passing by on the street and you wonder if she's your mother."

Distantly, Tina said, "I can't remember her face."

She thought that her mother was blonde like Queenie, but maybe she was misremembering.

"I can't remember, either," Graves said. "It's a fucked-up world we live in. Things do need to change, but all we've got is Grindelwald and he's a madman."

Then, the tension in the moment seemed to drain. Graves took off his hat, a grey fedora, and set it atop Tina's head. "Hold this for me while I win my duel, will you?"

Tina smiled under its wide brim. "Of course, sir."

* * *

The makeshift arena placed Graves and Risa across from each other on balconies, a wide open space between them. Protective wards were drawn around the area so stray spells wouldn't ricochet and it limited the audience to only being Tina, Ariana, and Jaren, who watched from an adjacent balcony.

"No Unforgivables, maiming, shields, Apparition, dark magic, or miscellaneous trickery," Jaren said, in a high clear voice. It was an announcement that Tina guessed was a formality. "This is an impact target duel."

Risa and Graves had their wand hands poised over their holsters. Jaren set off sparks with his wand, and at that signal, both of them snapped their wands upward and fired.

Graves' spell was a red volley of light that missed Risa completely, zooming past her shoulder. It fizzled out once it hit the ward.

Risa's spell, on the other hand, was a blue ball of light— _Expulso_ _,_ Tina identified—that landed squarely against Graves' heart, burning white. Graves didn't flinch; he absorbed the impact of it, even though it tore through his white dress shirt, probably forming a nasty bruise, too.

"Your aim's off. You're not using your usual wand," Risa said. "Do you yield?"

"No." Graves set his wand back in his holster.

They drew again, and the result was the same. Graves' spell went wide again, while Risa hit her target and Graves sported a new hit on his abdomen. He was evidently breathing hard, and Tina clenched one of her hands into a fist. Mercy Lewis, he was insane.

"Why can't she win with a Stupefy?" Ariana asked, leaning over the balcony, gripping the railing. "They're only blasting each other and Mr. Graves' wounds are going to get worst."

"That's how the rules work," Jaren said. "There's a limited amount of spells you can use. The point of a quick-duel is about blasting with accuracy and speed. You're not showing off fancy hexes or charms. It's not Ilvermony class."

At that note of disdain, Jaren fired off a spark for the next round.

This time, Graves seemed to have calibrated to his new wand, and his spell was faster, rapid, and closer to its mark. The red light whistled past Risa and nicked her cheek, drawing a line of blood, and he was able to twist his body to the side to avoid her spell.

"Better," Risa said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. "Now there's the Percy I remember."

"You've gotten rusty without someone good to practice with."

"I'm not the one who has to spend hours sitting behind a desk," Risa retorted. "You used to be a wild kid. Shame what happened to you."

That wasn't exactly fair, Tina thought. Graves had a reputation for being one of the best duelers in MACUSA. He wasn't Director of Magical Security for nothing. In fact, he was working pretty well with the twin disadvantages of having been tortured by Grindelwald and figuring out a different wand.

Loyally, Tina thought that Director Talon had been the best dueler she'd ever seen in her life, but she was biased in that respect, considering he had been her informal mentor ever since she was young.

Meanwhile, Graves and Risa readied for the next round. They whipped their wands out, rapid spell fire too fast for Tina to follow, blue bursts blinking from their wand tips.

Graves' spell threw Risa backward, the blue streak of light making her fall to her knees. Risa's spell embedded itself in the same place as before, Graves' abdomen, and he coughed from the pain of it.

"I yield," he said, wincing and holstering his wand, and Tina let out a breath out of something like relief. "Gordian-accursed _Grindelwald_ _._ Risa, will you give me the information anyway or hold onto it?"

Risa pulled herself up, dusting off and straightening her scarlet red robes with a jerk of her wand. "I'll tell you where the Scourers are," she said. "If you think they'll help you fight that crazy asshole Grindelwald—I'll tell you."

Laughing, Risa added, "I missed this, Percy."

He grinned, and he _did_ look wild. "Me too."

* * *

"We didn't want to take them in at first," Risa said. She navigated through the winding maze of balconies, her red robes rustling as she walked. "Frankly, Percy, you were right. A chunk of the Scourers are very anti-magic in their beliefs and it's detestable."

"But," she went on, "time, and our influence has helped temper them. The faction in charge right now, the Ardens, have become more anti-MACUSA in message."

"Wonderful," Graves said, grimacing.

"It's not as bad as you think," Risa admonished. "The reason why they first approached us is because magic has been cropping up in the recent generation of Scourers and they wanted training. The Scourers without magic picked up Haven's form, and some Havenites have even joined them."

"It's because we're in mutual agreement that ignorance and separation between societies is ruination," said a voice, suddenly, around the corner. "Those without magic aren't puppets to be Obliviated. MACUSA and the International Conference of Wizards are only delaying the inevitable. We shouldn't be expected to be defenseless when the Statute falls."

"Esek!" Jaren exclaimed, and he ran over to hug the boy standing in the corner. "When did you get back?"

Esek was a wiry teenage boy, dark-skinned, wearing No-Maj clothes. He shook Jaren off, but patted a hand against the boy's flat cap in exasperation. "Just now," he said. "Essie's off on a mission, and Mother sent me to kick out Kervin, who I'm sure is causing trouble."

Esek's eyes flickered to Graves, Tina, and Ariana. "Who's this?" he asked Risa.

"Percy is an old friend of mine," Risa said. "They're asking for Scourer assistance against Grindelwald."

"Now there's another thorn in our side," Esek said. He was, apparently, prone to philosophical tangents, and Tina hid a smile because it reminded her of Talon. "A reactionary who thinks himself superior to non-magical people and wants to rid the world of us, rule over us, or both. He's the natural product of a wizarding culture that enforces separation. He's no better than MACUSA."

"Some say a degree of separation is necessary because No-Majs will demand too much of magical society," Graves interjected mildly. "Warfare will become more violent, and there's such a thing as too much progress if magic is used unnecessarily. It's true that life would be easier for American mixed-magic families if Rappaport's Law is revoked, but that doesn't translate to the Statute of Secrecy being pulled down entirely. Look how the British wizarding world handles mixed-magic families."

"The British wizarding world?" Esek scoffed. "You mean, pureblood politics, non-magical-born prejudice, lesser rights for goblins and house elves, a prison that manages to be worse than MACUSA's capital punishment, and the rest of the mess? There's no existing model for a free, equal, and truthful world. We have to make it ourselves."

"Haven," Risa said, "is the closest thing that we have for now. I'll leave you to it," she nodded at Graves, "because I have mirrors to watch."

She Disapparated, and reluctantly, Jaren followed suit after tipping his cap in goodbye.

"We understand that you might have an object that could help us recognize Grindelwald's spies," Tina said, eyeing the kid carefully.

"An object," Esek said thoughtfully. "Yes. _That_ could be used like that, although I'm still studying it. Risa vouched for you and—"

"And you call yourself a scholar," said a man, his voice gruff, a newcomer who looked like he came out of nowhere. "Ezekiel, you don't have half the brains of your mother. That gentleman over there is MACUSA's Director of Magical Security."

Instincts thrilling through her body, Tina's hand went to her wand, and she positioned herself where she could get a clear shot on short notice.

"Percival Graves," Graves said, with one of his usual cocky smiles, but the line of his jaw was tight. "We're here for an alliances of sorts. Grindelwald's as much a thorn in our side as he is in yours, Mr.—?"

"Kervin," the man said. "And we don't make nice with MACUSA scum."

"You don't have the authority to make that decision," Esek said. The relaxed casualness of his posture was gone, and he regarded Graves and Tina with heightened vigilance, even as he glared at Kervin.

Kervin was fast, and Tina and Graves were quick as they reached for their wands—but Ariana was even faster.

Kervin lobbed something that exploded into fire, and Ariana flung herself in front of them, shadows unfurling across her back like Thunderbird wings. The flames dissipated across the surface, as if sucked into a vortex. Ariana collapsed on the ground, breathing hard, her eyes glowing white.

"You stupid kid," Graves said quietly, immediately kneeling by her. "Barebone said not do anything without your phoenix here." As he soothed her, talked her down, he gestured toward Tina to cover them.

Tina shot a _Stupefy_ toward Kervin, but it seemed to uselessly get absorbed in his chest. Was he wearing spell-resistant armor of some kind? He reached for another grenade or explosive, and knowing what Credence told them about Scourers, it was probably engineered to blast through most shield spells.

All right, Tina thought. She moved her left hand to rest horizontally across her right wrist, her right hand gripping her wand tightly.

She didn't like doing this at all.

Inhaling, she fed wandless magic from her left hand to her right hand, channeling energy through her wand. Red lights burst out from her wand tip in rapid succession.

The beams spun, and when they hit Kervin this time, they burrowed deeply into his chest, his armor, and he was Stunned, knocked unconscious.

Grimly, Tina lifted her left hand away from her wrist.

Graves was staring at her. "Since when did you know pulsing, Goldstein? It's effective but you could blow off your damn hand."

"Director Talon taught me, sir."

It had been a trademark trick of his: channeling magic from one hand to another in a way that doubled spells and gave them an extra kick at the end. The drawback was that your aim was less accurate, since the grip was very unwieldly, and the increased energy was volatile.

Talon had actually gotten himself killed while pulsing a spell during a raid.

"You knew Talon?"

"After Healers found my father dead from dragonpox and saw that my mother was a No-Maj, they notified the Aurors," Tina said. "Talon came along with the Obliviation squad and he…took pity on me. Visited me over the years before his death and encouraged me to become an Auror."

Auror Talon with his rapid fire rambling and long dark hair and salt and pepper beard. He had been pushing toward getting Rappaport's Law overturned before his untimely death, but soon after, the Great War broke out, No-Majs were seen as violent fools, Grindelwald's rhetoric spread, and much of the current American wizarding administration decided to adopt increasingly isolationist stances. They didn't want to overtly involve themselves in Grindelwald's war or the No-Maj war and they wanted to keep things the way it was.

Tina wanted to become Director in the future, even if she wasn't exactly sure what that would entail, what she would do. But things would _change_ , someday, and she thought of how Graves said the word.

Graves said, "You ought to teach me how to pulse later."

"If you teach me quick-dueling," Tina said.

Ariana, who had apparently simmered down, her eyes back to their normal blue and the darkness gone from around her, disentangled herself from Graves' arms and said, "Show me, too."

Tina was about to say _absolutely not_ about pulsing, even though Talon taught her how when she was eleven years old after Tina had begged him—when Esek cleared his throat.

"You mentioned Barebone," he said, pointedly ignoring Kervin's prone form. "Credence Barebone, right? My sister Esther is looking for him because we were wondering how he knew of us."

* * *

Earlier, Grindelwald, as Graves, asked Credence to dinner in that same diner where he had taken him in another life. Credence acquiesced, wondering what he was up to and decided that Grindelwald was trying to gauge if he was truly a Seer or not.

It wouldn't be that difficult to pretend. Years of listening to Grindelwald wax poetic about his visions had always left an impression on Credence.

Grindelwald was already at a booth when Credence arrived, his Transfiguration in place, his face impassive. Credence gave him a stilted greeting, and Grindelwald nodded back.

Credence steeled himself for Grindelwald's mind games, usually cloyingly gentle and alluring, because that was _him_ , through and through, the same man who had tied the symbol of the Deathly Hallows around his neck, claiming him before he knew what Credence was, the same man who then relentlessly called him a miracle.

"Your childhood must have been hard," Grindelwald began, no doubt recalling the memory he had filched from Graves. "Growing up among those fanatical No-Majs."

"It's in the past now, Mr. Graves," Credence said. He said, deliberately, "I've found my freedom."

After the events of New York in his time line, Credence had spent months with Newt learning about magical creatures before Credence settled at Hogwarts under Albus' personal instruction.

Grindelwald may have presented the idea of the magical world to Credence when he was younger, but he didn't have a monopoly over it, he didn't have the right to claim responsibility for bringing Credence over. He had lied to Credence, and it was Albus who helped Credence find a foothold in magical society.

"You have the gift of Sight as well," Grindelwald persisted. "Since you were a child, did it show you how you could have had freedom? Did you know about magical society beyond the caricature that your mother told you about? One has to wonder—have you thought about freedom beyond what you've achieved now, Credence?"

"There were many ways I could have freed myself earlier on," Credence said. "But my sister—"

He stopped. He didn't mean to mention her.

"Your sister?"

"A Muggle girl that my mother adopted," Credence said. He supposed that it should be safe, for now, with Modesty with the Scourers. "I stayed to protect her."

Grindelwald's eyes—as Graves' eyes—were dark but soft at the same time, and Credence thought, _I know. I know I remind you of him._

"You shouldn't have held yourself back," Grindelwald said, quietly. "All those prophecies lost while you could have pursued the art further. There are many futures you could have chased, many paths you could have taken."

Credence took Grindelwald's palm into his, looking at the lines as if he could read them. Grindelwald let him, watching him carefully, and Credence gently flipped his hand back over, pushing it down on the table.

"I choose the present we're living in now," Credence said. This one with Ariana, Fawkes, Tina, Percival Graves, and the Scourers.

Not Grindelwald's hypothetical _what-if_ s he used recount to Credence all the time. What if you were by my side? What if I realized what you were and you joined me since the very beginning? What if you joined me now?

"Then," Grindelwald said, "why tell me about the dark creature that's beset the city?"

"Something tells me that the creature wants to be found."

Credence felt his heart beating loudly in his chest and he thought he could almost feel the Obscurus surge out of him. He held onto it, but his magic made a panicky burst, and—

There was a vase of wilted carnations on the table. In this universe, it was now Credence who windlessly and wordlessly transfigured a flower, remembering what had happened once before.

"A periculid," Grindelwald said, as it sparked red, and he reached to stroke the petals, a small shield protecting his hand from getting burned. "My favorite flower. What a…intriguing coincidence." He tilted his head, a smile playing on the edges of his mouth.

Credence flushed. He felt eight years younger again, even if circumstances were different. And it _was_ embarrassing that his magic could act bizarrely. It had been very much like this when Credence was becoming familiarized with his magic in the beginning of his studies, expressing itself in incredibly powerful and unexpected ways since he had never properly exercised it before.

"The result of years of hiding my magic while living with my Muggle anti-magic mother," he murmured. "It can be erratic."

"No," Grindelwald said. "It's charming."

He put his hand against the warmness on Credence's cheek, then dropped his hand away.

"I think," Grindelwald said softly, "that I should be off to watch if that dark creature will appear according to your vision. My apologies that I couldn't stay longer."

Credence could barely remember saying good evening, because he was…bewildered, once again, trying to quantify exactly what happened between him and Grindelwald for not the first time in his life. He vigorously rubbed his face with the back of his hand.

Nearby, someone coughed, and Credence turned to see Graves and Tina sitting at an adjacent booth, after Graves dispelled a particularly strong Notice-Me-Not charm.

"There are a lot of solutions to your current problem," Graves said, dryly. "I highly doubt 'torturedly seduce the problem and hope it somehow dies' is the best answer. Especially because he's wearing my face and that's revolting."

Credence laughed, more of a stifled sob than anything. When he brought his hand away from his eyes, he found that he was crying. Merlin, Morgana, Jesus, _God_ —

He said, "You're right, Mr. Graves."

"Mr. Graves' house has become rather crowded," Tina said. She lightly pressed a cloth napkin into his hand. "Ariana, Esek, and Esther Arden. Esther was tracking you and she sent a messenger pigeon telling Esek where you were. We directed everyone to the Graves estate."

"I'll be there," Credence said, accepting the cloth to roughly wipe the last vestiges of wetness on his face. "There's somewhere I have to go first."

* * *

He made a requisite appearance at the park in his full Obscurus form against the backdrop of the night sky. It was only briefly, and he didn't see Grindelwald, although he thought he could feel his presence with the Obscurial sense.

Then he was gone, before Grindelwald could confront or catch him.

* * *

A/N: so this is the point where this fic really gets very...off-canon, but yeah, I really meant it when i said this fic is indulgent.

1) Quick-dueling is based on fast drawing or quick drawing.  
2) Pulsing is very loosely inspired by fanning a revolver.  
3) The reason why Ariana can sense Scourers is because they're more like trace-magicals/Squibs than No-Majs/Muggles. I borrowed the term 'trace-magical' from A Different Start by Darkestar.


	4. Chapter 4

Esther dashed at him toward his left side, a gold-bladed knife flashing in her hand. She ducked fiery spell fire that he shot at her, her curled hair tied in a bun bobbing with the motion, and she blocked the next burst with the knife's blade.

She grabbed her hand out to twist his wand arm, knife poised over him, but Credence was ready for her. He disarmed her with a quick Expelliarmus, and the knife clattered onto the grassy ground of the Graves estate.

"Better," Credence said. "You're still forgetting what I told you."

Esther recovered, scrabbling to pick up her knife. She frowned, clearly frustrated. "That you're fighting differently than how I learned?"

"You were taught how to fight American wizards," Credence said. "Grindelwald and many of his followers use European dueling styles. It's more versatile with swishes and flicks, and they cast different kinds of spells."

Tina, who was watching at the sidelines, pitched in. "He's right. We're taught blunt force. We're supposed to put opponents out of commission with explosive curses like Confringo, Bombarda, and Expulso."

Credence said, "A British wizard, for instance, would be more likely to put you in a body bind or give you jelly-legs."

"Okay," Esther said, thoughtful. "And what you were saying about swishing and flicking—that means European wizards have a bigger range than American wizards, since you turn your wand around more. I have to move faster."

"That's correct," Credence said. She was a quick learner; in his future, she had intuitively picked up most of this herself. For now, she was younger and still inexperienced. "But for American wizards, though they have a smaller range, their aim is forced to be better out of necessity. And they have techniques like indirect spell fire and pulsing." At the last one, he nodded at Tina.

She made a face. "It's not exactly common, and I don't recommend using it often. Don't tell me that future alternate me-"

"You did," Credence admitted.

"Of course I did," Tina said with a sigh. "I'm fine showing Mr. Graves now because he's a grown wizard and my boss, but what in Tituba's name was I thinking then, teaching it to you?"

Credence bit back a response. He had been a grown wizard, and Tina only taught it to him because she caught him trying to wandlessly adapt it to his Obscurus. He didn't like pulsing with his wand, because she wasn't wrong that it was dangerous.

"And I still don't like the idea of you teaching this No-Maj girl, Credence," Tina continued.

Rolling her eyes, Esther said, "I'm seventeen. I'm an adult according to wizarding years, and ma'am, I'm a _Scourer._ We grew up with all this training mumbo-jumbo since infancy. You did want our help."

"We intended to borrow that artifact of yours—"

"Which Esek is still trying to figure out," Esther said.

Esek Arden was ransacking both the Graves estate library and a magical library in the city and had yet to calibrate the ring—for it was a ring—for use. Credence wanted to help, but his future knowledge wasn't enough in this case, because he had no idea how the Ardens had eventually made it work.

It didn't help, either, that the Scourers were embroiled in a bit of an ideological schism lately and the teenage Arden siblings were the only assistance available.

"My mom probably could've figured out the ring," Esther said, sheathing her knife. "But she's dealing with Kervin and the others who are trying to take over."

("We are fighting," Esek said earlier, in his usual dramatic fashion, "for the future of this organization. We want to look beyond our old reputation as non-magical Scourer descendants, the old story about being bitter about Salem. We're opening our doors to half-bloods and trace-magicals and non-magical-borns and anyone else unfairly maligned by MACUSA and the Statute of Secrecy and the staid mores of wizarding society."

"That sounds grand, kid," Graves said, distinctly unimpressed. "I'm still a MACUSA employee."

"Well, Grindelwald is collecting your dragots," Esther said.)

Credence had heard of the current Scourer conflict, which Modesty alluded to him in passing in his future, but she only spoke vaguely of it and he didn't know the end result. He knew that the Arden siblings did end up leading the Scourers in a couple years, though who knows what power struggles or ideological shifts happened in between.

He left Tina and Esther (Tina had given in and agreed to practice duel with Esther) to find Ariana, who had been watching from one of the windows.

"Why don't you teach me how to duel?" she asked. She was sullen because Credence had interrupted Graves' attempt to show her quick-dueling that morning, which was certainly an unorthodox thing to teach a beginner.

"You're still learning the basics of magic and how to control your Obscurus," he reminded her. "Ariana—"

"Don't treat me like a child," Ariana said. "I've been repressing my magic all my life and I want to learn how to use it practically. Mr. Graves said he didn't mind teaching me battle magic because he used to mentor kids all the time at Haven. If Gellert—if Grindelwald—wants me because of what I am, I want to be able to protect myself."

Credence had almost forgotten that she was a teenager and she was a Dumbledore to boot. She said that little speech of hers in a measured angry tone, blue eyes narrowed in righteous fury.

"Ariana," he said. "I was dying in the future I came from."

She looked confused. "I don't understand."

"I made myself into a weapon of war because I knew it was something I was able to do," Credence said. "I learned dueling and incorporated my Obscurus abilities into it and it was killing me. I don't want you to die like that."

He exhaled a harsh breath, remembering the pain after every Obscurus transformation, remembering how Fawkes sang him to sleep while he thought that the darkness would devour him.

"Oh," she said, quietly.

"I don't think you're not brilliant or capable, because you are," Credence said. She had showed him the Obscurial sense, and she was clever and level-headed, especially for a child who was brought thirty years into the future and took everything in a single stride. "I know you don't deserve a death like that."

She whispered, "What about you?"

"Don't worry about me," he said, pressing a hand against her hair. "Time travel reset the decay process for my body. Unless a full blown war breaks out now, I won't use my Obscurus as often with the same magnitude as I did. It doesn't matter what happens to me—Ariana, you'll have your brothers, Fawkes, Tina, Mr. Graves, and the Ardens."

"You're not going to die," she said, mulishly, as if it was something that she could single-handedly prevent all by herself. "I think that's all the more reason I should learn some sort of basic dueling. I promise I won't overuse my Obscurus."

Her eyes were burning bright earnest blue, and Credence relented.

"You can practice with Esther and Tina," he said. "No pulsing. Make sure Fawkes is always with you."

She beamed, and Credence hoped that Albus and Aberforth wouldn't be upset with him for allowing their sister duel. He wondered what Albus would say if he saw his sister dueling with the American style.

* * *

Credence checked on Esek in the Graves family library to see if he had made any progress with the ring, but Esek still had his head burrowed in a book, piles of books stacked around him.

Graves was helping Esek out, although he apparently wasn't much of a researcher. He glanced out the window every now and then to watch the practice duels.

When Credence entered the library, Graves said, "So you're finally letting Ariana duel." He shrugged toward Ariana, who had joined Tina and Esther outside.

"It's a good thing, you know," Graves continued. "You can't be overprotective, since she's what Grindelwald's after."

"No," Credence said. "Not just her." He let his eyes flutter white for a second and smiled wryly after his vision cleared back to normal.

" _Two_ Obscurials," Graves said, eyebrows raised. "I was wondering how you knew how to help her with her Obscurus. You are a mystery, Credence Barebone."

Credence said, honestly, "I don't think I mean to be. It's—a novelty to talk to you."

"Ah," Graves said. "I suppose in your old timeline, you only knew him as me."

"You died in that trunk."

"Then I appreciate being saved from an undignified death," Graves said. Then, after a moment of silence, he said, "What is this leading up to, Barebone? We can't all hide in my estate forever and let him keep up this ridiculous farce. I'm willing to give up this artifact nonsense and properly reach out to MACUSA, no matter the risk, but Goldstein and the others seem to think that this is _your_ party."

"My party?"

"I'm the official head Auror, but you've somehow usurped my authority and you're leading an underground charge against Grindelwald. Or something like that. It's disastrous because you don't really want to kill him—"

"I know what he's capable of," Credence said, sharp. "I came from a future where he drove the world to ruin."

"I saw what happened at that diner," Graves said. His voice was startlingly gentle. "And you know what happened. You can't capture or kill him, because _you don't want to do any of that._ That's why you roped along me and Goldstein and the Scourers, didn't you? Because you were hoping we might provide the right moral support for you, or we'll end up doing what you can't.

"And it makes one wonder how much of the war in your future is enabled by you, if you had the same problem then as you do now."

Credence's face was pale. He felt himself shaking. "I didn't enable anything, Mr. Graves."

Graves didn't understand the future he came from. He didn't know what it was like to live in a devastated world-he didn't know what it was like to fight battle after battle, back to back with his friends and praying they wouldn't die-

"No," Graves allowed him. "No, I don't think it was your fault. You're an Obscurial, which means you're a massively fucked up kid when it comes down to it. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to throw you into a battlefield, with Grindelwald right there doing his beguiling revolutionary routine."

Credence didn't reply. He looked, unblinking, outside the window, out toward the grey November sky.

"You're luckier than most people," Graves said, insistent, low. "You get a second chance and the element of surprise. You wanted help and we're here. So, fine, Barebone, I'll follow your lead, too, but this better be good. What's next?"

Credence told him.

* * *

It was the fifth owl from the French Ministry of Magic, but it wasn't as if Monty was keeping an accurate tally.

He burned the letter with a flick of his wand and sent the owl on its way, idly wondering why they hadn't used a messenger pigeon. He was in America, after all, and an owl stuck out like a hag at a fashion show.

Not that Monty had never seen hags at a fashion show, of course. He had once attended an intriguing event where hags showed off their sweeping dark robes and glistening warts, hair combed in wild hag styles. It had been an enlightening experience, to be sure, but it wasn't really applicable to his field of study.

Monty busied himself with the simmering cauldrons around him in his private laboratory. He always had a handful of potions brewing around the clock, dabbling in this or that. Sometimes he got up in the middle of the night when struck by inspiration.

He was still trying to solve the Merlin-damned redhead problem, and there were a couple of hair dye potions of various shades that he liked tinkering with.

Then there were other projects that he knew he shouldn't technically be working on, but sometimes his mind raced and he couldn't help himself.

Monty absent-mindedly tugged at the hair tie threaded through his unruly dark hair, which he kept as a safety precaution.

Now there was another annoying problem, he thought to himself. He could never make anything that managed to tame his own hair. He ran through ingredients in his head, from aloe vera to jojoba extract to Umbrella flower pollen to kneazle whiskers.

His thoughts were interrupted by the doorbell, and he went to answer it. His usual supplier came around this time, laden with crates.

It wasn't. Monty was greeted by someone with the most atrocious haircut he had ever seen in his life.

He sighed. It was the sort of thing one of his investors would do, and you had to please your investors.

"Come in," he said. "I know just the thing for that."

Before the visitor—before the bowl-cutted monstrosity—could say a single word, Monty unceremoniously swept him into his laboratory, muttering potion names and extracts to himself. He immediately snatched up a vial of hair growth potion, wandlessly levitated it to dump on the stranger's head, then watched in satisfaction as it started its work.

The stranger flinched, as if he had been attacked, his hand going to his wand. Monty rolled his eyes; twitchy customers, Merlin's bald spot.

"Who sent you?" Monty said, as he rummaged for hair potions. "Fawley? Anderson? Brioni? Perchance helping a nephew or son-in-law who had an unfortunate accident with a rabid potions knife, except this sadly appears deliberate-"

He realized, belatedly, that the bowl-cutted monstrosity had a companion beside him, who was shaking with silent laughter. (Her hair, a short bob, could be improved, but it was serviceable.)

"...Tina," the bowl-cutted monstrosity said to her.

"He's not wrong," she said, attempting to maintain a straight face but utterly failing. "You had better hair in that memory you showed me, with that long hair of yours. I was wondering why you didn't fix it after you got your new wand."

"You and Graves seem to both have picked up a new habit of delivering uncomfortable truths to me this week, but about very different subjects."

"No, I think you make bad decisions centered around you-know-who, too," she said.

Having lost the thread of conversation, Monty waved his wand to control the bowl-cutted monstrosity's now-rapid hair growth and said, perplexed, "I take it that this visit isn't about hair, then."

"No," both of his guests chorused together. Bowl-cut boy, exasperated, and bob-witch, amused.

Credence Barebone and Tina Goldstein explained the circumstances of their visit as Monty rinsed and cut Credence's hair, since he might as well take care of that particular issue in the meantime.

"Let me see if I misheard," Monty said. "You, Credence Barebone, are from the future. You want to stop Grindelwald from stealing a potion of mine, because it ends up playing a central role as his main weapon."

He was pretty sure he had misheard.

"Yes," Credence said, glancing up at Monty from the chair he was reclined on. Monty could tell that he was attempting to do some sort of 'sullen war-weary time traveler warrior' attitude, but it was difficult to take seriously when Monty was setting in gel between the strands of Credence's hair.

"There's a problem with that," Monty said. "There's nothing to steal. I'm not a battle potioneer. I'm a _hair mogul._ I've turned down offers from ministries and defense organizations because they can't get over some rambling papers I published when I was a seventh year, for Merlin's sake."

He'd only published because Professor Slughorn was a pushy bastard. War potioneering was a messy business and Monty decided he didn't want to go anywhere near all those ministries after he graduated.

"Really?" Tina said, curious. "Even MACUSA?"

"Not MACUSA, actually," Monty said. "It's all the European agencies that are falling over themselves, because of the conflict with Grindelwald and such. MACUSA has left me alone for now and I've set up my business here in New York. I expect I'll return home one day, but not yet. Maybe you confused me with someone else-?"

"I don't think so," Credence said. "You wrote about Greek fire when you were a seventh year in Hogwarts."

Well, that was nothing unique, either, Monty thought. Countless potioneers wanted to recreate the exact recipe of Greek fire, liquid fire that burned across water, and as a student, Monty had been no different.

"The recipe I suggested was no closer or farther to Greek fire than anyone else," Monty said. "It wasn't hailed as a breakthrough." He summoned a red ribbon with a wand flick and began tying up Credence's hair, which was now shoulder length and glimmered with a beautiful shimmering black sheen.

"You modified it somehow," Credence said, adamant. "In my time, after Grindelwald escaped MACUSA custody, he stole your recipe and spent years producing it. It was like a combination of a Muggle bomb and Fiendfyre—powerful but controllable enough, blasting through wards, destroying cities."

Monty did admittedly lapse and make the occasional side potion not related to hair, but nothing of that scale or scope.

He frowned deeply. "You'll be happy to know that I don't have anything like that in the works, then. I suppose if you mix together some of my experimental hair-color-changing-potions when they're boiling you could get a volatile reaction, but otherwise...no."

Tina said to Credence, "Maybe he just hasn't made it yet."

"Or we're in an alternate timeline where I never make it," Monty suggested.

"Maybe," Credence said, but he didn't sound convinced.

* * *

When Credence and Tina departed to find that potioneer, Ariana was left alone with Esther Arden for the first time. Ariana had a magic lesson with Graves in the morning, but then he went out to a city magical library to continue researching the ring alongside Esek, and so it was the two of them and Fawkes at the Graves estate.

Graves told them to send a messenger pigeon to either him or Credence if anything went wrong; Ariana supposed he meant if her Obscurus acted up. She liked Esther's pigeon, who got along well with Fawkes.

Ariana found herself roaming the Graves estate by herself. She didn't know Esther very well, after all, and there was something in her head that reminded her that Esther was a _Muggle,_ even though it had been eight years since...

No, she told herself. Calm down. Breathe.

She felt herself sinking into one of her moods again, the mood that left her immobile and feeling empty and useless, sitting by the window or lying in bed. When she used to feel like this, her mother would hold her, or Aberforth would try to make her laugh, or Albus would aimlessly chatter about something he was studying, which had an oddly soothing effect.

She missed them. She wondered what it would be like, seeing her brothers again. They would be old now (well, she could see Albus grinning at her and saying _forty-five isn't old, Ariana)._

She didn't think she was ready to see her brothers yet, though. Not when she was still scared of herself, knowing the extent of what she was capable of, what she could do. Credence might have come to help, but he had made her aware of how much Obscurials could be weaponized and she was afraid to expose them to all this—her and Credence, and Gellert's pending interest in both of them.

Credence had told her that Albus and Aberforth had settled into their own lives, Albus as a Transfiguration professor and Aberforth taking occasional magizoology-related jobs. Ariana wondered what her place would be, years later, barging in as a ready-made weapon.

She knew that Albus was already sort of involved because of Gellert, but she knew her brother. If he and Gellert had a bad falling out, he was probably avoiding him as much as possible, even if Gellert was stirring up obvious trouble.

Avoidance was Albus' favorite tactic when he was frustrated or upset by something—blithely changing the subject when Bathilda Bagshot from next door tried to make sympathetic noises about their father, for example—and Ariana didn't think a forty-five-year-old Albus was any different from a teenage Albus.

She was turning this over in her head in a gloomy daze when Esther Arden entered the room and suddenly asked her something.

"What?" Ariana said, still half-immersed in a stupor.

"Practice with me," Esther said. "I'm getting restless and could use another go."

Abruptly, Esther launched herself forward, and Ariana threw up a shifting barrier of black. The Obscurus moved like it had at Haven a week ago—black sand, alive with its own mind, different from the ekings of inky clouds that she usually conjured during her lessons with Credence.

"Nice reflexes," Esther said, approvingly, drawing back.

Ariana, meanwhile, thought Esther was out of her mind. "Don't," she said, sharply. "I could hurt you."

"I've seen something like that before," Esther said. "'S fine, Ana."

Esther had dueled with Credence earlier, Ariana remembered. But this was different.

Before she could protest, Esther dragged Ariana outside, to where they had practiced dueling before.

"Tell me how yours acts," Esther said. She ran assessing eyes over Ariana, making her feel self-consciousness.

"It moves," Ariana said. "I can feel where things are-" the Obscurial sense "-and I think it moves to block people or spells. But I don't think-"

Eyes glimmering, Esther said, "Let's see how we can work with that, then."

And they practiced, until Credence and Tina Apparated back to the Graves estate.

"What happened to your hair?" Ariana asked Credence, wide-eyed.

Credence bent down to meet her gaze and said solemnly, "I was attacked by a madman with hair potions."

Ariana wrinkled her nose. Sometimes Credence was purposefully enigmatic, assuming he could spare her the harsh reality of his future, but other times he was plain strange.

"You look more presentable, Barebone," Graves contributed, in passing. He had also just Apparated in, with Esek side-along. He was balancing a very tall stack of books in his arms.

"Shut up, Mr. Graves."

* * *

Monty—he demanded that they call him Monty and nothing else, no formalities—visited the Graves estate the next day. Credence had left him Graves' address in case he had any more questions, and he did, pestering Credence about the future and offering unwanted hair care advice left and right.

Credence thought that the potioneer was probably bored of being cooped up in his laboratory and wanted company.

"—and that's how I obtained hair from a Chinese Fireball," Monty said.

Esek was diligently taking notes, and Esther and Ariana listened with avid interest. Tina had left for Auror work; it was getting steadily more difficult for her to act ignorant around Grindelwald. Graves was smart enough to have already made excuses and holed himself up in the library.

(In actuality: Monty looked at Graves' head, opened his mouth, and Graves said, "No," and left the room.)

"I doubt a magizoologist friend of mine would approve of your potions gathering methods," Credence said to Monty.

"My bowl-cutted horror, I swear to you that I merely fought the first dragon, and it was self-defense. After that, I ensured that the hairs were plucked after the Fireballs were given a heavy dose of Sleeping Draught."

"You can't claim that you were acting in 'self-defense' because of a creature," Credence said, repeating something Newt had told him once. "Magical creatures only act according to their natures, and wizards and witches are the ones disrupting them."

Monty paused, his hazel eyes narrowed, then he said, "Yes, I suppose you're right. Truthfully, I was relieved that I didn't kill him, since I'm no dragon slayer. I do think it's one of the saddest ironies in the world how some of the greatest healing potions require the deaths of magical beasts. Dragon liver, hippogriff heart, graphorn horn. A life for a life."

Ariana said, "That's how magic works, doesn't it? Sacrifice-giving up something in return for something else."

Credence knew that she was talking about the Obscurus. The parasite fed upon their magic and life, but it also afforded them a measure of power.

Credence said, "Most ordinary magic doesn't work that way, Ariana. You don't sacrifice anything for a wand-lighting charm. There are—exceptions."

"Dark arts," Esek said, knowledgeably. "And there's alchemy as well. The principle of equivalent exchange exists in select magical fields, and it's seen like a _warning_ to most wizards and witches. They rarely touch that type of magic, and you know, the dangers of those subjects inspired non-magical people's myths and legends. 'Deals with the devil' alluded to dark magic that damages your soul; 'the Midas touch' alluded to how the powers of alchemy could be more destructive than fruitful."

"You're like an encyclopedia," Monty said, awed.

"He's the scholar," Esther said. " _I'm_ the one doing the actual fighting."

"So what does that make us?" Ariana asked, not looking away from Credence, apparently refusing to be distracted. "Dark wizards and witches?"

"I don't know what we are," he said, because he knew that they defied categorization.

They were human wizards and witches, but in some way, they were magical beasts themselves, weren't they? And how dark were they? It wasn't anything that could be fully answered, Credence thought.

Credence noticed Monty giving him and Ariana a long searching look—Credence had admitted that they were Obscurials when he spoke of his future—yet there was nothing fearful or accusatory there.

Credence was reminded of Albus and Newt. They had both expressed an interest in his Obscurus that often bordered on scientific, but it was also an sympathetic, unhurried, unpressured interest.

And that was strangely comforting, he thought.

* * *

Monty soon became a regular visitor to the Graves estate in the following two weeks, dropping in to have the occasional meal or chat. Sometimes he fussed with their hair (everyone except Graves); sometimes he prattled about his hair potions that were being sold; sometimes he even participated in their practice duels.

Dueling was how he eventually earned Graves' respect.

Graves had continually grumbled about Monty's presence, and Credence conceded that it was his house that they were all invading. It didn't help that there was a certain personality clash issue involved.

Then Monty cheerfully bested Graves in a quick-duel, of which he had just learned the rules of that day. Monty winked at Credence and wrote his victory off to his time at Hogwarts, fighting his yearmates who were bullies, and Graves stopped complaining.

Graves still didn't let Monty touch his hair, though.

* * *

And then there was that one time that Monty caught Credence having a nightmare.

Credence had fallen asleep in one of the guest rooms of the Graves estate, and he had awakened, gasping out loud, a name that could be _Gellert_ — _Gellert_ — _Gellert_ —fear and uncertainty churning inside of him.

Monty peered at him from the bedside, his wand illuminating the dark room. He had taken to staying overnight recently, taking residence in one of Graves' innumerable guest rooms. "Are you alright? Ariana said she was worried about you. She borrowed Fawkes because she had trouble sleeping tonight as well, and she didn't want to leave you entirely bereft. She says she's sorry—"

"No," Credence said. He sat up, put a hand to his forehead. "She needs him more than me."

"It would upset the esteemed Mr. Graves if you blew up his house," Monty remarked.

Credence looked down and realized that the Obscurus was loosely draped around him, like an unwanted protective coat. With effort, he closed his eyes and made it dissipate.

"Sorry," he said. He felt infinitely, infinitely tired. It was the same kind of tiredness he had felt in his future. "You can leave. I didn't mean to keep you up, Mr.— "

"Monty," Monty corrected him firmly. "None of that. You're not one of my investors, and Merlin help you if you say my full first name. Only my family calls me that and everyone else usually gets viciously hexed."

"Your family," Credence repeated. He was reminded that Monty was young and wealthy, the only pure-blooded wizard among them.

(Credence could potentially be a pureblood, but he didn't think so. His childhood was more like a Muggleborn's.)

"Ah yes," Monty said. "You might have heard of my father."

Credence had. Albus had been in correspondence with him; they both shared pro-Muggle stances, although he knew Albus had never gone as far as suggest that the wizarding community should aid the Muggles during the Great War.

Albus was…vague on the issue of war for years, Grindelwald's war and otherwise. He had pushed for Hogwarts protections and he denounced anti-Muggle views in Prophet articles, but he didn't actively participate in political bodies.

"Wizarding politics can be as messy as battle potions," Monty said. "To tell you the truth, I think my father was slightly disappointed I didn't follow him to the Wizengamot. Potions have always been easier for me than people."

Credence blinked. Monty seemed amiable enough most of the time. He wasn't quite like Newt.

"I know what you're thinking," Monty said, wry. "All it takes for me, Credence Barebone, is to smile and talk about hair. I think I'm here because of you. Time traveler, Obscurial, friend of Statute-breaking Muggles and rogue Aurors."

"I didn't ask to be here," Credence said, quietly, his voice cracking, before evening. "I was sent and I have to go through all this again."

He didn't regret saving Ariana, but this didn't feel like the second chance that Graves told him it was.

And I can't stop dreaming about _him_ , Credence thought. His vision was blurry, unfocused.

Monty reached his hand out to twine through Credence's long hair. He whispered a spell, and a braid knitted itself. It was barely noticeable, only a sparse number of strands intricately wrapped together and tucked behind Credence's ear.

"I don't know what to do to make you feel better," Monty said, trailing his hand away. "What are you afraid of, Credence Barebone?"

I am afraid of being pulled into an endless dance with Gellert Grindelwald again, he thought. I am afraid of Ariana being harmed or hurt. I am afraid of an Albus Dumbledore who doesn't care for me.

And I wanted, he thought. I wanted so badly to die.

His Obscurus had been killing him, and Albus Dumbledore saved his life by giving him a younger body. And Credence thought that he almost _hated_ him for it.

Credence didn't voice any of this out loud. Wearily, he said, "Go to bed, Monty."

Monty was silent. "If that is your wish," he said, finally, getting up to leave. "But you must know, you're my new project, Credence Barebone. You won't be able to be rid of me entirely."

Credence touched the braid in his hair.

* * *

Graves and Esek hadn't made any significant progress toward researching the ring. Tina was dancing around Grindelwald at work, trying to make sure he didn't tamper with any important cases. Esther and Ariana kept practice dueling like their lives depended on it. Monty always brightly informed them that he wasn't brewing a dangerous weapon and no one had made an attempt to break into his laboratory.

Credence wanted to further approach Grindelwald, acting as a Seer and making Obscurus bait appearances and he was firmly told "no" at least eleven times.

This all translated to roughly two weeks of waiting. Credence tried to be productive, joining in research and practice duels, but he felt on edge, wondering if Grindelwald would strike first, wondering if Grindelwald suspected that he was the Obscurial.

Maybe Graves had been right. Maybe they should tell MACUSA. Or maybe they should owl any of the ministries of magic across Europe, or contact Albus.

Credence wracked his mind for his future knowledge, sharing what he knew with the others and making aimless speculations for what they could do next, and he hated that it felt so useless right now.

Grindelwald was right there, but he wasn't alone, with his followers embedded into MACUSA. And acting as Graves, he could easily accuse the real Graves as being the imposter and get the whole group of them legally executed, like he had tried to do to Tina and Newt in Credence's old timeline.

It was a conundrum: figuring out how to successfully take down Grindelwald's followers in New York and unmask Grindelwald.

News from Tina finally broke the tense monotony.

She emerged from the Floo, covered in soot, her face chalk white.

"Sir," she said, immediately addressing Graves first. "Grindelwald ordered an Auror and Obliviation squad raid on Haven tonight. We have to tell them to get out _right now._ "

"Gordian," Graves growled. "Of course, he has my memories. I can't believe I didn't think of this."

"He didn't do this in my timeline," Credence said, perturbed.

"Well, he must have gotten bored this time around," Graves said crisply. He paced back and forth, his wand hand flexing. "It's clever. He's riling up anti-MACUSA sentiment by breaking up mixed-magic families. He's wiping out a place where mixed-magic families peacefully coexist. And he'll have MACUSA tell the press the dangers of No-Majs knowing about us—I have to warn Risa."

Without hesitation, Esek said, "My mother will offer Havenites refuge. We're Scourers, Mr. Graves, and we always have spare hiding places lying around."

"Send a pigeon to her and get the addresses. We're going to have to make a helluva lot of portkeys."

Esek nodded and started scribbling on a piece of paper.

Graves reached for his coat, sweeping it around his shoulders.

Tina cleaned the Floo ash from her clothes; Credence called for Fawkes; Esther checked that her knife was sheathed on her belt; Monty tightened the ponytail in his long hair ("Why shouldn't I accompany you? You know my dueling expertise, and I very much agree that Rappaport's Law is rubbish since we don't have anything like that at home"); Ariana-

" _No_ ," said Credence, Graves, and Tina all at once.

"I won't duel," she said. "I can help evacuate Havenites, tell them what's happening and give out portkeys."

She didn't meet any of their eyes.

"Give me your word, Ariana," Credence said. "You can help evacuation at the beginning, but after that, you'll portkey back here before the Aurors arrive."

"Look," Graves added, "you've gotten better at dueling, but you're no match for a grown Auror, Grindelwald follower or otherwise. And it's no good if Grindelwald sees you, kid."

Tina looked unhappy that Credence and Graves were even offering Ariana the opportunity to come along, but she seemed to understand. She sighed, and said, "Promise us, Ariana."

"I promise."

Credence supposed that was enough.

Graves reached to side-along Ariana and Esther; Tina reached to side-along Credence and Monty; and they Disapparated with a crack.

* * *

Tina knew that she was committing treason. She was actively working against her fellow Aurors and the law. Grindelwald might be impersonating her boss, but Haven was illegal.

It was tantamount to throwing away her career.

But she barely thought about any of this when she told Graves of Grindelwald's plans, and she felt nothing but panic for Haven.

Tina had never outright admitted it to herself, but she knew it wasn't right. It wasn't right that her mother had been dragged away from her and Queenie and they had to raise themselves.

The reason she became an Auror was to make things right. To make sense of the world, to match Director Talon's notorious bravery and to do something that would have made him proud.

I hope, she thought. I hope that this is doing something _right_.

The portkeys—a shoelace string, a floppy purple sun hat, a copy of last week's issue of The New York Ghost, and other assorted knick knacks—crackled after a tap of her wand.

Tina was in the Crow's Nest alongside Risa, who was watching the mirrors for any sign of MACUSA. Every so often, Monty, Credence, or Graves would pop in, grab the portkeys or help make some of their own, and pop back out.

There was an automated Sonorous charm screeching all throughout Haven: "A _MACUSA RAID IS IMPENDING. PACK QUICKLY AND ANTICIPATE THE DELIVERY OF A PORTKEY TO YOUR DOORSTEP. IF YOU STAY, YOU WILL BE ARRESTED OR OBLIVIATED. A MACUSA RAID IS IMPENDING-"_

"I'm sorry," Tina said, addressing Risa in a sober tone. "We should've acted sooner since we knew that Grindelwald is masquerading as Mr. Graves, but we didn't do anything. We didn't know he would go after-"

Risa waved a dismissive hand. "No. I knew something like this would happen sooner or later. That's the risk we take by violating Rappaport's Law. Right now, all we should focus on is to get everyone out safely."

"I wonder," Tina found herself saying out loud, "if things were difficult. Me and my sister could have grown up here. We're half-bloods, too."

"And you're an Auror like Percy?" Risa said, her head cocked. "I see why he trusts you. He used to take young Havenites under his wing when he was here. You must have reminded him of his old kids."

Tina realized that she wasn't wrong. Graves had taken a particular liking to her from almost the very start, treating her as an unofficial trainee of his. She had never thought it was out-of-the-ordinary, but maybe that was because she had been close to Director Talon in the past.

"I don't know if I'll be an Auror any longer," she admitted. "But I think this is worth losing my badge for."

"You're showing more moral courage than those other dunderheads at MACUSA combined," Risa said. Her eyes were kind. "Auror Goldstein, it's a slow process, how hearts and minds change. I think it might take us half a century, a century, or more until Rappaport's Law is struck off the books. Every bit helps-every half-blood who stubbornly lives out a fulfilling life and thrives even though they're not supposed to exist; every witch or wizard who doesn't report the mixed-magic family next door; every Healer who quietly registers half-bloods as the children of magical parents.

"Don't ever forget that first point, Auror Goldstein. We exist because they don't want us to."

* * *

Haven was in a state of utter chaos. People dashed across the balconies, laden with possessions, searching for their friends and family members. Messenger pigeons streaked in and out. Several Havenites aided in portkey creation.

Some Havenites recognized Graves, yelling out-"Percy! Knew you would come back to us one day!" "So you're the one who gave us the heads-up?" "You taught me how to quick-duel!" -and Graves always reacted with a mixture of guilt, sheepishness, and determination.

So this is Haven, Credence thought. Muggles and witches and wizards of any magical ancestry. He wondered what Albus would think of this place.

"Credence Barebone," Monty said, through the clamor and noise and ruckus. "You have made my life significantly more interesting."

"You chose to be here," Credence said, watching as Ariana and Esther talked to a little Muggle girl, explaining to her the Sonorous announcement."You did turn down becoming a battle potioneer."

"Battle potions," Monty said, "doesn't have anything like you, my bowl-cutted monstrosity."

Monty was looking at him again, that look of fond, sharp attention that Credence was beginning to associate with him.

Suddenly, there was a sound like a bang. Haven's wards were being battered.

"It's time for you to go," Credence said to Ariana.

She hesitated, but before she could argue, Esther said, gently, "Listen to him, Ana. You can go."

"Essie-"

"There will be other duels," Esther said. "There's too many factors here. I want to be at your back like we practiced, but I'll keep evacuating Haven. These people taught me how to fight and I'm getting them to their new homes. Next time, okay?"

To Credence's surprise, Ariana listened. She reached a hand in her pocket, where she had tucked away a portkey that Tina had given her, and she looked at him and Esther before she blinked away. He hadn't realized that the two girls had grown that friendly. But, he resolved, there wouldn't be a next time for Ariana.

"And that was our signal, too," Monty said. He slipped his robe hood over his head.

They had planned to split up – Graves, Tina, Risa, and any other Havenites guarding closer to Haven to make sure evacuation continued, and Credence and Monty taking the front entrance. Graves and Tina knew how Auror strategy played out during raids, how Aurors usually split into two groups, one coming in front and one in back.

The front group of Aurors typically wasn't large in number, intending to serve as a distraction while a larger group of Aurors and the Obliviation squad came from another angle.

Maybe Grindelwald was among the first group, maybe he wasn't. Graves had been banking on dueling Grindelwald and retaking his position.

But he was wrong, in this instance.

When Credence and Monty appeared in front of the Muggle building below Haven, Credence saw Grindelwald, still disguised as Graves, joined with two Aurors.

Multi colored lights flashed, ineffectually hitting Haven's shields.

Credence Apparated again and surrounded himself in billowing Obscurus clouds, partially keeping his human form. He reappeared at the place where their spells struck, hovering midair.

And he raised his hand, signaling Fawkes, and there was _fire_. Fiery flames in the shape of a phoenix with its wings outstretched, dispelling the Aurors' spells. The fire swept around him like a veil.

An indrawn breath. "Albus-? No-"

Credence parted the flames with a wave of his hand, and he drifted downward, landing on his feet. The Obscurus clouds emanated from him, black mist laced with traces of fire.

"No," Credence agreed.

In a single second, Credence made a decision. He brought his hand further down and he split the earth, the street underneath, his shadows like a scythe. Then, he drew the rubble up into a wall ringed in a circle, a layer of wards whispered against them.

He had set himself and Grindelwald apart from Monty and the two other Aurors.

Grindelwald didn't flinch throughout the proceedings. Instead, he stood in the middle of it, watching as the wall formed, watching what Credence built.

Credence let his hand fall back to the side, his eyes sliding back into dark brown. Fawkes swirled fire around him, perched on his shoulder.

"That," Grindelwald said, "was quite a theatrical display."

Then Grindelwald said, "It's you. I take it you're no Seer."

"Not like you," Credence said, unable to stop the hint of a smile pulling at his mouth.

"How could you have survived this long?"

"I've been told that I'm a miracle," Credence said. "I am nothing like that-"

"And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm," Grindelwald recited, softly. "Howbeit they looked when he should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly: but after they had looked a great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god."

"Blasphemy, Gellert?" Credence said, but he did feel a thrill, hearing verses that he knew directed at him. He was no god, no saint, no miracle worker, but of course Grindelwald looked at him like he could never be anything but.

"You are beautiful." Grindelwald said it simply, plainly, as if it was the easiest truth in the world.

It wasn't the first time he had said it to him, although in this timeline, it was.

"There are things," Credence said, "that have gotten out of my control. I'm a time traveler, but too many people have become involved and I don't know what I should do."

He looked at Grindelwald and said, "I will come with you, but you have to promise me something."


	5. Chapter 5

Monty was advised, under no uncertain terms, to make sure Credence didn't duel Grindelwald alone.

Graves had made it very clear that they shouldn't separate.

Defying that rule, Credence had thrown up a warded wall enclosing him and Grindelwald in a confined space.

Monty winced, and hoped that he would be forgiven for not stopping Credence in time. And he hoped that Credence knew what he was doing.

Now, he faced two American Aurors. Dull brown coats, uninspired hair styles, wands drawn out.

"Hullo," he said mildly, and for his politeness, he was rewarded with rapid spell fire, twin streams of red.

Monty spun his wand in time to whip up a shield charm. Smiling, he said, "Gentlemen, I suggest you leave the premises. You're trespassing the homes of many people up there."

"That _home_ ," sneered one Auror, "is in violation of Rappaport's Law. It's teeming with No-Majs."

Monty had grown up with pro-Muggle politics all his life. He said, "American mixed-magic segregation is woefully uncivilized."

Flicking his wand, he sent wind spraying outward, gusts of air that knocked off the Aurors' hats, blurred their vision, and left them fumbling to keep ahold of their wands. After half a minute, they canceled it with a Finite, but it had given Monty enough time.

He had picked a potions vial from his cloak pockets and sent its contents out into the air.

The wind was starting to whistle again.

"My father wanted to go into the Muggles' war," he said, out loud, mostly to himself, as the breeze picked up around him, urged by wandless, wordless magic. "The _Great_ War. The War to End All Wars. I was a young aspiring potioneer when he was making a political ruckus about all this, and I heard about the extent of Muggle chemical agents.

"Chlorine gas. Phosgene. Sulfur mustard. Have you heard about the last one, gentlemen? Mustard gas isn't a gas; it's a liquid, very much like a potion.

"It burns your skin. It closes your airways and you cannot breathe. It induces nausea, coughing, abdominal pain, blindness. And death, of course."

The two Aurors, by now, couldn't move. The potion that Monty released had a paralytic effect.

"I was swept up studying battle potions around that same time," Monty said, his voice almost inaudible. "Go to war, my father said. Go to war, my potion recipes indicated. But, eventually, wizarding Britain didn't officially join the Muggles' war. Some British wizards and witches surreptitiously joined the fighting, of course, but I was still underage by the time the war ended. When Grindelwald's attacks started in Europe, I ran here to America to follow other pursuits so I wouldn't be tempted to go into war potioneering."

One of the Aurors let out a strained sound, wand hand twitching, and he fell over in a heap. The other Auror renewed his struggling against the potion's effects, and—

The second Auror managed to send out a cutting curse that Monty didn't bother to dodge. Then the Auror keeled over, lost to unconsciousness.

The curse cut against Monty, marring from his forehead to his wand arm in a diagonal slash. It barely cut through his body, his cloak protecting him. The only places where it met his skin was his face and his arm.

Hmm. He would have to make the paralytic stronger next time. More nocnitsa saliva, perhaps.

"Oh dear," he said, with a smile. "It looks like I have blood on my hair."

The wind stopped whistling.

* * *

Before Tina and Graves could dash out to meet the Aurors who had found a backend way into Haven, Risa stopped them. Her blood-red robes swirled around her, her blue eyes serious.

"Haven is not without its defenses."

They gathered in the room of mirrors: Tina, Risa, Jaren, and Esther.

"Percy, do you remember that boy Arty?" Risa said.

"Yes," Graves said, his head jerking in recognition. "Trace-maj kid. His parents and older brother were all magical and they didn't want him to be taken away to a No-Maj family. He had a knack for mechanics, I remember. Always fiddling with radios and the like."

Risa murmured a quiet _Revelio_ , and Tina was suddenly aware of thin wires running above their heads, strung from wall to wall.

"Years after you left, Arty came up with this system," Risa said. "It's an ingenious mix of magic and engineering. These wires are all over Haven, waiting to be activated."

She pointed to the objects on top of a wire. There were two mechanical mice. Intricate little metal creatures that looked like toys, with beady eyes, a pointed nose, and a long tail. They had miniature wheels in the place of paws.

"And these," she said, "do the rest of the work."

Risa held her wand straight above her head, and the mirrors shimmered. Instead of doors, they showed the maze of balconies and apartments that made up Haven.

The Aurors had split up into groups, Tina noted, following the usual protocol. They were searching for Havenites to haul into jail or Obliviate.

They were her co-workers, but she felt a distant detachment. She tightened her grip on her wand, still in her hand.

Jaren and Esther took Risa's place in the center of the room. Jaren had tucked his flat cap into his trouser pocket, and he was bare-headed, red hair like a flare. Esther wore No-Maj boys' clothes: trousers, black cardigan, and her hair in shoulder-length brown curls. They stood back to back, studying the mirrors around them.

"Wait until they drift apart further," Esther said. "We have to make sure they're separated enough."

Esther and Jaren were motionless for a couple seconds, until Jaren said, "Apartment 269 is occupied and the Aurors are tracking them with a detection charm."

"268, lure," Esther said.

The Aurors halted at a room. A light flickered under the door, and Risa told Graves and Tina, "The mice are equipped with chatter charms, too. It sets up the impression that there are people in the room."

The drawback of a detection spell, Tina remembered, was that it wasn't precise. You could use it to locate the general presence of people in a large space, but you couldn't find the very exact spot they were located. If you wanted to find exactly where they were, you needed their names.

It was like a compass that gave you vague directions. For the Aurors at Haven, it would be especially difficult to use the detection charm because of how the apartments were crammed together. The detection charm might point to people being in this area over here, but the problem was which apartment?

And Haven's contraption was exploiting that very flaw.

The Aurors had entered the apartment that didn't contain any fleeing Havenites. They were pulled in by the light and the voices.

"268, ward," Esther said.

Looking at a mirror, Tina saw the mechanical mouse become visible on the wire running through Apartment 268. It whirred backward, then slammed against the wall above the door, flashing yellow. The Aurors were trapped in the apartment.

"Aurors on 470 hallway."

"370 to 379, roll," Esther said.

The mice strung on the previous floor exploded.

The ground that the Aurors stood on crumbled and gave way—they managed to catch themselves with cushioning charms, but several of them got knocked out cold in the process.

"752, 753, 754, lure."

"652, 653, 654, roll."

Esther and Jaren continued along that vein.

"It's like a puzzle," Tina said out loud. "You're figuring out where they're going, where to lead them, how to take them out or trap them."

"I've never seen anything like it before," Graves said. "It's strange, but—it's working."

He was right. In various turns, the Aurors were being herded into apartments, wards slapped to imprison them, or they were sent tumbling downward.

"Esther Arden fancies herself a fighter," Risa said, with a soft laugh, speaking to Graves and Tina in a hushed voice. "She forgets that she's as sharp as her mother and brother. You need a sound memory to play this game and know what mice are in which apartment and how to position and activate them. No hint of magic in her, but she's one of our best strategic minds. In another life, Esther would be Obliviated quicker than you can say Rappaport."

Graves said, "I have, you know, Risa. Obliviated No-Majs while at MACUSA."

Tina thought, Me, too.

"It's your job," Risa said. "Of course you did, Percy."

"I believe the Statute of Secrecy should still stand," Graves said. "Regardless of ideological nitpicking, you're right that I've been a coward. I haven't been pushing against Rappaport's Law like Talon before me. I've gone to work, did my job, and went home."

"You and I," Risa said, "are of an older, complacent generation. We're not revolutionaries or activists, either us, not truly."

Risa nodded toward Esther and Jaren standing back to back, a half-blood boy and No-Maj girl confidently delivering commands to a complicated magical mechanical system.

"But these kids," she said. "They're the future."

* * *

Monty Apparated to the Crow's Nest. It was what little he could manage. He couldn't tear down the wards Credence had erected.

Monty's wand hand felt numb with muted pain from the Auror's cutting curse, and he couldn't heal it himself. He wasn't great with healing magic, especially with his wand hand out of commission.

"I fear Credence has done something monumentally foolish," he said.

* * *

When Graves and Tina Apparated to Credence, they found that the wards were pulled down. Credence was alone, standing amongst a ruined blockade of concrete, Fawkes curled at his feet in a heap of scarlet feathers.

"Barebone," Graves said his voice low, "what happened?"

"He's gone," Credence said. "He's called off the Aurors as well."

"What did you do?"

"We dueled," Credence said. "He fled."

Credence didn't turn around to look at them. He thought of Ariana, and he disappeared in a flash of black.

He was back in the Graves estate, where Ariana was in the sitting room, toying with the Ardens' artifact ring. It was a silver ring, glinting when it caught the light as Ariana's fingers twitched in anxious movements.

"You're back," she said, and she smiled in relief. "Is everyone alright? Esek left to help Havenites settle in at the new places they portkeyed to."

There was another crack of Apparition, and Graves, Monty, and Tina appeared.

Ariana, abruptly, looked startled. "You're glowing," she blurted. "With—Gellert's sign—"

"Ariana, what are you talking about?" Tina asked.

"Him," Ariana said.

She had the ring on her finger, and she gestured toward Monty.

"How did you get it to work?" Graves said. "Is he-?"

Monty stilled. "I'm not with Grindelwald."

Graves pried the ring away from Ariana's hand and slipped it on. "No," he said slowly. "She's right." He turned on Monty. "Why did you leave Credence alone with Grindelwald?"

"I couldn't stop him in time," Monty said. "He cast those wards. You honestly can't be accusing me of supporting that maniac on the basis of a _ring_."

"I wonder if Barebone got some details wrong about his future," Graves said. "How willingly did you make that weapon of Grindelwald's? Are you making it now? And I've noticed how obsessed you've been with Barebone, trailing him whenever you're here. Were you planning on handing him over to your leader—"

"That's enough," Credence said sharply. "He's not with Grindelwald."

"And how do you know that?" Graves challenged. "We all know that your judgment's impaired when it comes to Grindelwald. Gordian, Haven was put at risk because of this whole situation, which could've been handled better. We've been sitting around stressing over the details of your past instead of facing him head-on."

Multiple cracks of Apparition rang from outside the estate.

"The ring," Credence said. "After Monty's presence activated it, it must've drawn Grindelwald followers in New York here. Maybe even Grindelwald himself."

"So you admit that he activated it."

He did, Credence thought. There was no explaining exactly how or why, but somehow Monty had triggered the ring's magic.

"Sir, I don't think Monty's with Grindelwald," Tina said, addressing Graves with her forehead crinkled in consternation. "It's absurd."

"I don't want to hear this anymore," Monty said, shortly, with a shake of his head. He gripped his wand hand, which Credence noticed was bleeding. "I'll return later when you get a cooler head, Director."

He Disapparated before anyone could stop him.

* * *

Of course he was followed.

Merlin, Monty had forgotten how tracking charms could be used to monitor Apparition, and it seemed like several of Grindelwald's followers had blanketed one over the Graves estate and traced him.

Monty stumbled into his laboratory, fumbling for dittany and finding none. He needed to heal his wand hand; he didn't trust himself to duel multiple wizards without it.

Rapidly, he tapped into the security alarm he had placed over his laboratory, ever since Credence had warned him about potential intruders. The scrying glass showed three wizards at the door, disabling the wards.

This was unfortunate, Monty thought.

He could duel wandlessly with battle potions, but he didn't have any on hand. He had run out of the paralytic potion he had used earlier. And he had stalled his miscellaneous projects to work on just one in his lab.

This was very unfortunate, Monty amended.

Then he cast a glance at the single cauldron that he had been toiling away in front of for the last several weeks, whenever he wasn't at the Graves estate.

It wasn't perfected or complete. Monty hadn't even tested it.

The potion was intended to be a healing potion. It would be the first healing potion that Monty ever tried to invent. It looked like unappealing murky black tar.

And it was for Credence-for Obscurials.

He wanted to figure out how to make an Obscurus more controllable that didn't require the help of a phoenix. He knew that an Obscurus killed its host at a pace that could be slowly or quickly, depending on the person, and he envisioned a hypothetical potion that would dull that lethal effect or even prevent an Obscurus-caused death entirely.

Monty looked at the cauldron in front of him and then at three wizards in the scrying glass, and suddenly, he let out a shaky laugh in revelation.

I was always meant to make this in some way, Monty thought.

In Credence's original timeline, that universe's Monty must have created the potion after seeing the news of the Obscurus attacks.

In this timeline, Credence had unknowingly hastened the development of the potion by contacting Monty.

Monty hadn't created a healing potion. He had inadvertently made the weapon that Credence had spoken of.

It was, perhaps, not as dangerous as it was in Credence's future, not having been modified by Grindelwald, but it was likely still a formidable weapon in its own right.

The antithesis of shadow was fire, and to make an Obscurus antidote, Monty had added various components associated with fire, hoping that they would be enough to naturally suppress the Obscurus' parasitic draining abilities.

Phoenix feathers, jinn breath, Hungarian Horntail spikes, periculid petals, ingredients associated with Greek fire, and many others...

Monty closed his eyes and summoned the wind.

When the potion was exposed to the wind, it leapt into black flames. It let itself be pushed by the breeze when Monty directed it, like an amiable frolicking wave, and all he could think was: _Forgive me, Credence._

Weeks ago, at the Graves estate, Monty had asked Credence in a drawl, "And what was this fearsome mystery weapon called anyway?"

"Prometheus," Credence had said. "It's called Prometheus."

* * *

It looked like she and Graves would get the opportunity to duel today after all.

They Apparated in the thick of it, back to back, wands holstered. The area outside the Graves estate was a clearing of nearly-winter-dead trees, and leaves crackled underfoot at their appearance.

"We'll find out what's going on with Monty and the ring later," Tina said. "You're still worried about Haven, Mr. Graves."

"Maybe you're right, Goldstein," he said. "I think a lively duel is just the thing I need."

He smiled. That wildness again. Tina returned the smile, and her Auror training filtered into her muscle memory, making her stance straighter and her wand arm suspended at her side.

There were three Grindelwald followers. Tina numbered them Suspect 1, Suspect 2, and Suspect 3 in her head from a clockwise direction.

One of them, Tina identified with a jolt, worked at MACUSA as an Obliviator.

Credence hadn't been wrong that Grindelwald had support within MACUSA.

" _Bombarda_ ," Tina started off, with a rapid draw of her wand, honed from the quick-dueling reflexes that Graves had shown her, "- _-Maxima._ "

The ground beneath Grindelwald's followers exploded. It kicked up dirt and rocks, white light bursting below them.

They emerged unscathed. Suspect 1 and 2 managed to Apparate out in time, appearing about three feet away from the exploded site, while the third cloaked himself in a shield charm.

"You're under arrest under suspicion for working with the dark wizard and terrorist Gellert Grindelwald," Tina said, her wand arm in a straight unflinching line.

Suspect 3, the Obliviator, was staring at Graves in naked shock. "He said-you're supposed to be dead."

"I don't die very easily," Graves said. "Don't forget the treason charge to add against Bartlett, Goldstein. And wasn't he at Haven today with the rest of the Obliviation squad?"

Tina thought she could remember seeing Bartlett in one of the Crow's Nest mirrors. She nodded.

"That was an unauthorized raid," Graves said. "I certainly didn't order it." He now had his wand out, too, left hand tucked on his wrist, and he pulsed a blue spell in Bartlett's direction, shattering the shield he had around him.

Bartlett let out a growl. He Apparated, joining the other two Grindelwald followers away from the grass and rock debris.

The next five minutes were lost to a sea of spellfire. Tina couldn't keep track of the incantations she used; it was only a tumult of flashing lights, muttered words, back to back with Graves as they threw up shields and fought explosive curse against explosive curse.

Bartlett and Suspect 1 utilized the very familiar American dueling style that Tina was used to. Yet the second wizard—Tina guessed that he had accompanied Grindelwald from Europe.

He had a more looser form and a different repertoire of offence. It was exactly like what Credence had said, keeping Tina on her toes as she canceled his attempt at Transfiguring the ground below into quicksand and she vanished a cloud of poisonous smoke that he produced with a twirl of his wand.

Then, Suspect 2 drew up a cover of fog that Tina couldn't manage to spell away. It made visibility difficult, and she fell back closer to Graves, her eyes scanning the surroundings.

They had shields up at the moment, but they couldn't be held for very long.

It would be a risk to drop their shields and blindly send spells to fight an enemy they couldn't see, while the enemy could see them. And she knew that Grindelwald's followers were likely encircling them from other angles, ready to cast once their shields went down.

"Ideas?" Tina asked. "Finite and Depulso doesn't work on this fog."

"Apparition," Graves said. "But we don't know how far this fog extends and they could just trace us anyway."

Tina tilted her head upward and a mischievous smile flitted across her face. "Then I'll have to be fast and out of spellfire reach. Did you play Quodpot in school, sir?"

"Don't remind me how many times that damned thing exploded in my face, Goldstein."

"Wampus, if I'm not mistaken? Always the worst performing team, unfortunately." She did her best to look innocent, the dim light of her shield charm illuminating her guileless expression.

"Gordian, Teenie, when I get my job back I'm going to write you up for impertinence."

She laughed. "Keep maintaining your shield, Mr. Graves. I'll draw their attention and hopefully take out the fog-caster in the process."

He hesitated. Then: "Go. I trust you."

She dropped her shield and Apparated upward. It wasn't high enough at first, her vision still obscured with a miasma of grey, so she vanished again, finding herself in freefall in the evening sky above the fog.

Tina crossed her hand over her wrist. But instead of aiming downward, she pointed her wand upward when she pulsed.

She sent out a cascade of sparks, spraying from her wand in an umbrella-like form. The sparks rained from the sky to the earth, narrowly missing her in the center of the spell.

Indirect spellfire. In theory, anyway, because she hadn't practiced it much outside Auror training, and especially not in midair. (Even if she had played Quodpot at Ilvermony and thought she wasn't that bad at it.)

She was interrupted by beams of jet blue light sent her way, and she Apparated again, and pulsed another shower of sparks from up above.

To an observer down below, it would look like it was raining red embers of fire.

When the fog dissipated, as if it had never been, she grimly hoped that she'd managed to hit or disable Suspect 2 and any of the others.

* * *

"I made a deal with Gellert," Credence said, quietly, after Tina and Graves had Apparated to confront Grindelwald's followers outside the Graves estate wards.

Ariana said, "Credence, what-?"

"To keep you safe," Credence said, reaching out to touch her hand.

He had stalled Grindelwald by handing over several of his memories, and then he promised that he would join him soon. All Grindelwald had to do was make a specific vow to not seek out other Obscurials to recruit, if they existed.

"You can't go to Gellert," Ariana said. Her face was pale, her blue eyes vivid in alarm. "He'll use you; you said that he sees us as weapons. The things he might make you do—it'll get you killed-"

"Remember what I told you about not worrying about me, Ariana Dumbledore?"

"Credence Barebone," Ariana said, mimicking how he had used her full name, "don't tell me you time traveled only to find yourself dying again. My brother didn't send you for this."

"Your brother doesn't know me here," Credence said. "And he'll be very happy to see you alive and well."

"You're not supposed to take my ill-advised suggestion that our magical world involves sacrifice so seriously," she said. "Stop it, Credence. Please."

She was begging him, pleading. Credence felt something tight in his chest, and he made himself feel distant, made himself feel nothing, because he thought he would fracture into shadows otherwise.

"I made a promise," Credence said, simply. "I'll leave Fawkes with you."

If Grindelwald wanted Credence, he wouldn't last for long, at least.

* * *

Credence picked up the now-activated ring and willed it to bring him to Grindelwald.

But it didn't. It took him to Monty's laboratory, and Credence frowned in bemusement.

Then, when he saw Monty, bottling up black liquid in a potions bottle, three Grindelwald followers lying at his feet, charred fire marks on the wall, he understood.

When Monty saw Credence, he looked stricken.

"Is that the only batch you made?" Credence asked.

"Yes," Monty said. "I didn't intend it to be the weapon, Credence. I didn't even write it down. My hubris got away from me; of course I would produce a battle potion, even if unintentionally. They were all that I studied for years."

Monty was clearly unhappy, hazel eyes downcast. His hair looked strangely wind tousled, and he still had dried blood on his face and his wand arm.

"Prometheus can't be banished or destroyed by normal means," Credence said. He Accio'd the vial, smoothly plucking it from Monty's grasp, and he said, almost gently, "I wanted to do this, ever since Gellert dropped the weapon the first time. But Albus always talked me out of it, reminded me that Gellert had more of it and it would be useless to stop it."

Graves was right after all. Credence did have a second chance at something.

He hoped that Grindelwald's promise that he wouldn't seek out other Obscurials would hold, even now. It had to be enough to protect Ariana.

Monty said, urgently, "You can't ingest it. I meant it as a healing potion, fire to neutralize shadow, but it's too powerful."

"Arrange for Mr. Graves to Obliviate the recipe from your mind," Credence said. "Or ensure your Occlumency barriers are strong."

" _Credence_ -"

Credence didn't drink it. He slipped his grip on his Obscurus, and it smashed through the glass bottle in his hand, the contents leaking and leaping into conflagration.

Black flames against black shadow.

Credence felt like he was being swallowed whole by a behemoth, a leviathan, some beast of the Bible.

So this was what it felt like to burn.

He had dreamed of burning ever since he was a child, sinful witch-boy bursting in flames like the ones depicted on the Salemers' banners. Hellfire of the damned, nothing like the softness of phoenix fire he would bathe in, years later.

And in those dreams, the Obscurus would buffet him, soothe him. It would make its presence known and wrap him in utter darkness.

It was fighting the Prometheus fire even now.

* * *

Credence collapsed, his eyes shut, his breath heaving. It seemed like there was a war waging underneath his skin: his veins were bulging black, and it was as if he would dissolve into nothingness at any moment.

He looked vulnerable curled up on the floor of Monty's laboratory, his coat swept around him, strands of his ponytailed hair loose and awry.

Monty couldn't wake him. Credence had absorbed the potion, taken it into himself. And it was Monty's battle potion, his _folly_.

Monty knelt beside Credence on the floor. He touched Credence's forehead, swept away the hair that had fallen across his eyelids.

With that movement, he noticed that something gold was glowing in Credence's hand. The artifact ring.

"What has he done to himself?"

Gellert Grindelwald. He was not masked as Percival Graves, but resplendent in his own appearance. Long, blond hair, a sharp handsome face with hollowed cheekbones, midnight blue cloak, and piercing eyes like glass.

Monty couldn't even properly register surprise or fear.

"There was a potion," he said, quietly, continuing to brush Credence's hair with shaking fingers. "My potion. He absorbed it to destroy it. So you wouldn't use it as a weapon."

"Prometheus," Grindelwald said, and Monty jerked in surprise. "Oh yes. He showed me his memories."

"He told you."

"He offered himself to me," Grindelwald said. "He's a fascinating boy, that one. I thought I would get to have him longer."

"Don't talk about him like that," Monty snapped. "He's not a thing—an object— _"_

 _"_ As if he wasn't the target of your more scientific curiosities?" Grindelwald said. His smile was taunting, knowing, and it made Monty grit his teeth in anger. "I know who you are. Fleamont Potter. Former would-be battle potioneer and son of the disgraced warmonger Henry Potter."

("How's it like having a warmonger for a father, Potter?" jeered the boys at Hogwarts.

And when his parents visited him at the hospital wing after Monty got into one duel too many, he laughed and said they were bothering him about his name.)

"I don't think you should be accusing anyone of warmongering," Monty said, tightly. "It's rather hypocritical of you."

"Perhaps," Grindelwald allowed, his eyes flashing in warning. "But I'm not here for you."

"He's dying," Monty said. "Even if it's—my fault—he'll be gone. Credence and Prometheus both."

"We'll see," Grindelwald said, and Monty suddenly realized that there was an air of... disappointment, solemnity, about him.

As if he too would regret Credence's death and he would try to prevent it.

A burst of red light knocked Monty aside, and the last thing he heard before he fell into unconsciousness was the spell _Legilimens_ said in a single breath.

* * *

Credence was buried in black, black. The Obscurus had tightened around him to shield him from the searing lick of fire, but he could feel it wearing him down.

Pulling him apart. Tearing cracks through the layers.

He had his knees pulled to his chest, huddled in a small ball in a corner of his mind.

"Credence," said a voice, ringing across his mental landscape.

Gellert, Credence thought. But it wasn't exactly his Gellert, from his time, was it?

Grindelwald materialized in front of him. He swept his eyes across the plains of blackness with an unflinching expression. "You foolish boy."

Credence laughed, softly. But it wasn't quite laughter, it was more like trembling. He said, "For the greater good."

He said, "Gellert, have you read the first recorded story about an Obscurial?"

When he was at Hogwarts, Credence had found the fairy tale in a dusty library tome.

"There was once a boy who was known for his little magic tricks in his village. He healed the other children when they were hurt playing. He talked to the animals. When he touched flowers, they bloomed underneath his fingertips.

"One season, there was a devastating blight across the land. The crops died, the animals starved, and the people suffered.

"The king of that land had heard of the boy, and he sent for the boy to be taken to his castle. He told the child to make the blight stop.

"The boy couldn't. He showed the king he could heal small cuts. He befriended the king's own hunting hounds. He conjured a rose for the queen herself. But he could not end the blight.

"And the king—the king resolved that maybe the boy's magic ability was the cause of the blight. Maybe the boy drew upon evil powers to the ruin of the land.

"The boy was thrown into the castle dungeons. Every day, the king sent his holy men to recite ancient rites, telling him over and over again how evil he was.

"And the boy whispered, Give me the power to protect myself. Give me the power to be strong. Give me something so I won't be alone.

"It was—it was the most selfish wish in the world. His magic took the form of a beast that ate him, ate the kingdom whole.

"And this," Credence said, "is why wizards and witches should never tamper with dark forces beyond their control."

Grindelwald reached out to him. The touch of his hands on Credence's shoulders. "It was never your choice to become this. You were hurt-"

Credence thought: I was not born to be a weapon or a trophy or a hero; I was not born for fanfare or the battlefield; I wasn't even born for fire.

"Gellert," Credence said. "Kill me. Please."

* * *

Credence's unorthodox partnership with Fawkes had started out as a one-sided courtship.

In his early days at Hogwarts, Credence had taken to hiding in the library or the greenhouses. It was summertime, none of the students present and only a handful of staff, and he had the occasional magic lesson with Albus.

Fawkes was a recent gift from Newt to Albus. Credence rarely saw the little phoenix, who was often out his own in the Forbidden Forest.

Fawkes hadn't liked being cooped up in Albus' office. He was a young, wild phoenix, stubborn and independent in a way that phoenixes could be.

And then, out of the blue, he started leaving Credence his feathers.

Credence discovered a red feather between the pages of a book he was reading. He found one fluttering between the cracks of the greenhouse door. Once, he woke up to a feather in his hair.

It was as if Fawkes was trying to tell Credence something that he couldn't comprehend.

Finally, Fawkes showed him what he wanted.

He transported Credence in a burst of phoenix apparition fire, transporting him up to the blue summer sky.

Fawkes wanted to fly with him. Somehow, he knew what Credence was.

It was exhilarating and terrifying all at once.

Credence had been shocked into Obscurial transformation, a fearful cloud of black hurtling downward to the earth, and then Fawkes wove through the shape of him, and he felt-

-safe. In control for the first time in his life.

When he alighted on one of the castle's balconies, his body reforming, his landing surprisingly graceful, he found Albus watching his and Fawkes' mutual flight. Fawkes let out a joyful warbling sound, and Credence had a flush on his cheeks that wasn't just exhaustion but excitement.

"How did he know?" Credence asked, after Albus explained the nature of old elemental magic, fire and shadow.

"Phoenixes are very clever creatures," Albus said. In demonstration, he cheerfully whistled a jazz tune that Credence recognized as one of Louis Armstrong's songs, and Fawkes faithfully replicated it.

Albus was always doing that—strange funny little things in an effort to make Credence smile or laugh. Credence didn't smile or laugh often in those early months after leaving New York, but he would bow his head or blush, the corners of his mouth sometimes twitching, and there was a bright dancing acknowledgement in Albus' eyes that seemed to say: _There, see?_

"So do you think it's fine if I continue, sir?" Credence broached tentatively. "If I keep flying with Fawkes?"

Albus was silent for a few moments, his long auburn hair rippling from a gust of wind, his eyes shining blue behind spectacles. Then he said, "Be careful. Even with Fawkes, you may still burn yourself out over time. But I don't wish to deprive you of this."

He knows, Credence thought. Albus knew that this one thing was the first thing that made him happy to be an Obscurial.

"I understand," Credence said, folding his arms against the balcony, tucking his chin above crossed arms. He looked out at the blue cloudless sky. "I think—it's better than a broomstick."

He had never mounted a broomstick before, but from what Newt told him about Quidditch, it didn't sound like it could compare.

"I feel like nothing can kill me," Credence said. "Not even death."

* * *

"You will not die," Grindelwald said, his expression unfathomable. "There are many methods to subvert death."

"None that will work," Credence said. "I know this fire is already killing me, but I want to be free, Gellert. It's been too long."

Credence said, "It's only two words. _Avada_ -"

"It would be an utter waste," Grindelwald said. His hands on Credence's shoulders like an anchor. "Fight the fire, Credence Barebone."

* * *

When Monty woke up from Grindelwald's stunner, he Apparated to the Graves estate to fetch help.

Esek, Ariana, and Esther were in the sitting room, tense. Grindelwald's followers outside were still occupying Graves and Tina's attentions.

Monty stumbled through the story to the teenagers. He knew that Esek and Esther were Muggles and couldn't do much, and Ariana was young—but Ariana, at least, he thought, deserved to know.

Ariana had her arms around Fawkes, the phoenix in her lap. She didn't speak, but then she looked up and said, "What can we do?"

Esek went to the windowsill, where Esther's pigeon's perched.

"Credence Barebone appealed for Scourer help," Esek said. "And he'll get it."

* * *

Before Monty could stop her, Ariana slipped away with Fawkes. The bird Apparated her to Monty's laboratory, and he let out a single sorrowful note at the sight of Credence.

Gellert—for it was Gellert, older, taller, the lines of his face harder, that boy of a single disastrous summer—was kneeling on the ground with Credence in his arms.

"Get away from him," Ariana said, her wand trained on Gellert's heart.

"Ariana Dumbledore," Gellert said, without looking up. "More time travel antics, I expect. It was foolish of you to come here. He tried to hide your existence from me."

"Do you know," Ariana said, her heart thudding, "how to save him?"

"He's begging me to kill him," Gellert said, with a smile that was wry and bitter. "I don't know, _Mausi._ What a waste."

"He cared about you," Ariana said. "In his future, he cared about you. Like my brother."

"I'm aware. Those memories he showed me made that obvious. He has very complicated loyalties."

"I think he did want to stop you," Ariana said. "In the end. Because he's trying to destroy Prometheus."

"Credence doesn't know what he wants," Gellert said. He put a hand on Credence's, tracing the lines of his palms. "His fate is in flux. Perhaps there is a future where I can revive him with the Resurrection Stone and the three of us-"

That was familiar. Gellert pontificating about his grand plans with Albus, Ariana along for the ride.

"I'm not going with you," Ariana said, quietly. It wasn't what Credence would have wanted, and it wasn't what she wanted.

"She isn't."

Ariana whirled around and saw-everyone. Monty, Tina, Graves, Esther, and Esek. There was a strange woman she didn't recognize, but from family resemblance, Ariana thought that she was Esther and Esek's mother, the current Scourer leader.

She was an imposing woman. She wore a brown duster coat several shades lighter than her skin and charcoal black gloves, and her eyes were startingly grey.

And, strangely, there was a small salamander on her shoulder. It was black, yellow spots dotting its body.

A faint mist hovered around the woman, and the salamander's beady eyes shone red.

 _("M_ _agic has been cropping up in the recent generation of Scourers," Risa said.)_

( _"I've seen_ _something_ _like that before," Esther said.)_

Obscurial. She was an Obscurial.


	6. Chapter 6

Gellert Grindelwald looked like he did on wanted posters and newspaper pictures, Tina thought, but they never did convey how he had a presence of almost elegant, refined power.

She and Graves had simultaneously bound Grindelwald in Incarcerous ropes. Even within the shackles, he was still a force of nature, speaking in a careless tone of surety.

"I've heard whispers about the American Muggle Scourers," Grindelwald said, ignoring the Aurors, instead addressing Mabel Arden. "I didn't realize that it was led by a witch. And an Obscurial, at that..."

Arden quirked a brow at Grindelwald. "I was the first witch in generations, even though many Scourers tried to breed magic out of our blood."

"And the other Scourers triggered your Obscurus with their prejudices," Grindelwald said. "Your parents?"

"They eventually took me to Haven to grow up among other wizards and witches," Arden said evenly. "Which I believe you organized a raid on recently."

Grindelwald smirked. "It had its purposes."

"Face-stealing, authority-abusing _b_ _astard_ ," Graves said, and Tina put a restraining hand on his shoulder before he could hex Grindelwald. She dearly wanted to hex Grindelwald, too, but right now-

"We're not here for this," Monty interrupted, glaring at Grindelwald. "Miss Arden, you said you could help Credence."

"I can," Arden said.

Monty had transfigured one of the chairs into his laboratories into a couch, and Credence had been moved onto it. Credence's skin was an unearthly color; it was as if there were galaxies underneath his veins, darkness ravaging his body.

Arden gently handed her salamander to Esek. At Ariana's curious gaze, she said, "Her name is Isla. She serves the same purpose to me as your phoenix does."

Then she went to Credence's side and began to speak.

"I was born," Arden said, "into the Scourers of the old order. Mr. Grindelwald was correct about the prejudices of the Scourers. The organization has its ties with anti-magic sentiment."

"And we're changing that," Esther said.

"Yes," Arden said, with a firm nod to her daughter. "We are. I'm named after Mabel Harden of the old Salem days, a witch who turned in her own mother over to non-magical authorities. That Mabel was a Scourer, and when MACUSA struck back against Scourers—executing and jailing them—she raged, and she passed along a centuries-old grudge through our family."

"Risa said you've been recruiting half-bloods, No-Maj-borns, anyone from Haven who wants to join," Graves said.

"Indeed," Arden said. "To survive, our organization has to take a new path. There are many wrongs in this country that need to be righted. There are many hatreds that shouldn't continue to be perpetuated."

Aden's gaze was cool when she turned to Grindelwald. She added, "MACUSA has its faults as well," and Tina found herself agreeing with an incline of her head.

"This idealism sounds very pretty, but it's rather useless," Grindelwald said. "Where were your ideals when Credence Barebone became an Obscurial?"

"He's a weapon to you," Graves retorted. "As if you care."

"No," Arden cut in. "Credence Barebone was partially my fault, in a fashion. I didn't realize that he was an Obscurial, even though I had been watching the family for years, waiting for them to collect the debt we owe them."

She removed the black gloves on her hands. "I suppose," she said, laying her hands on Credence's, "this is penance."

Darkness swirled around Mabel Arden. A storm cloud seemed to settle around her, ebbing, expanding, and the place where her and Credence's hands were joined ignited with dark flames. She took the black fire into herself, setting her hands against her heart-

"You can't do that," Ariana said, her eyes wide in realization. "Let me-you'll-"

"It's all right, little Obscurial," Arden said, smiling. "I've been ready for this. Essie and Esek will bring the Scourers into a new age, and I hope you and Credence and your friends will be a part of it."

Esther and Esek were unmoving, silent, but they seemed prepared. Their mother, Tina guessed, had already said goodbye to them.

Mabel Arden said, "I hope that for every child who grows up wanting to burn the world for turning its back on him, for hating him for being different, there will be a child just like him who wants to save it."

She was a whirlwind of shadow and flames that burned itself out, died into nothingness, leaving behind a dream too big to ever be fulfilled.

"A life for a life," Monty said in her wake.

Visibly, Credence's breathing slowed back to normal, color restored to his cheeks, and before he woke, Ariana had her arms around him, saying, over and over, "Don't ever do that again."

* * *

It wasn't quite a happy ending.

Gellert fluidly snapped the ropes around him in a single motion, and he surveyed them with an mixed expression of distaste (Tina, Monty, Graves, Esek, Esther) and intensity (Ariana and the still-unconscious Credence).

He lashed out a wandless spell like an invisible battering ram, and it was _fast_. Tina, Graves, and Monty were thrown by it, his first targets, the obvious threats, and they didn't stir from where they fell. Esek got caught up in the attack, too, stumbling when empty cauldrons cascaded around him.

Ariana shouted their names. Esther ran beside her, and Esther said, "Just like we practiced, Ana?"

Ariana nodded. She said, "I'm sorry about your mother."

"It's fine," Esther said, her voice slightly cracking. She recovered herself. "Come on. Mourning later. Let's make sure that Grindelwald doesn't kidnap you and Credence, shall we?"

Ariana held her hands forward, palms out, her eyes shining white. "Let's," she said.

She purposefully stood in front of Credence lying supine on the transfigured couch.

"Leave, Gellert," Ariana said. "It's over."

"Credence made a deal with me," Gellert said, his wand flying back into his hand, which Graves had confiscated. "I expect him to honor it, and for you to come along as well. I can help you both, _Mausi_. Please."

Ariana sent out a funnel of black from her outstretched palms, and Fawkes, behind her, lent her fire. It twisted through the air, sweeping toward Gellert, but Gellert, his mouth in a frustrated line, batted it away with a shield charm.

He didn't notice Esther underneath the funnel.

She was running underneath it, the shadows masking her presence, and she leaped at him with her knife.

"Clever," Gellert said, "but you're still a Muggle, girl."

He whipped out a red light at her. Ariana shielded Esther in time, the funnel converging to absorb the spell's impact.

Esther retreated closer to Ariana, grinning. "Thanks."

"This isn't some child's game," Gellert said to Ariana. "Your Obscurus-"

"I think I can control it," Ariana said. "But not just that."

She took her wand from her coat pocket, and she held it how Graves had taught her, pointed straight forward. " _Reducto_."

It was a stream of blue. It wasn't a complicated spell, but at last minute, she slipped her wand away, wrapped her hand around her wrist, and propelled the blue light forward with a tail of Obscurus black.

The Reductor curse spun, and Ariana silently whispered an apology to Credence, who she had overheard describe Obscurus pulsing to an inquisitive Monty.

Again, Gellert spelled a shield, opening his mouth to try to persuade her again. He wasn't treating this as a duel, more like a conversation, Ariana thought in irritation.

The pulsed Reductor/Obscurus ripped through his shield, and Gellert disappeared in a burst of Apparition to avoid being struck.

"Now," Ariana said, when he reappeared, "are you taking this seriously?"

His blue eyes gleamed. "Be careful what you wish for, Ariana."

But before Gellert could respond with an incantation, Monty's Floo flashed green, and a visitor gracefully emerged, looking alarmed at what he saw.

"Albus," Ariana said softly. Her brother.

Like Gellert, he was older, too. Auburn-haired, auburn-bearded, his robe plum purple, and his eyes as blue as hers.

"I may have called in help earlier," said Graves, wincing, brushing off dust off his coat and hobbling to his feet. Protectively, he moved in front of Ariana. "I sent a pigeon to Theseus Scamander asking him to convince Albus Dumbledore to come to New York by any means necessary. By threat, bribery, or lying because I've heard he doesn't involve himself with certain matters if a specific name is mentioned."

"Ah," Albus said, blinking. "I take it that there is no such thing as a World's Fair Exposition for sweets. Gellert-?"

Gellert raised an eyebrow. "Albus," he said, in greeting.

Ariana fought the urge to bury her face in her hands.

Then Albus saw her and he stiffened. "Ariana?" he said. "By what dark magic are you alive? Is this an illusion? The Resurrection Stone-?"

"Time travel," Ariana said, with a sigh. "You indirectly saved me. In another future, you sent Credence-" she twitched her shoulder in his direction "-to pick me up through time."

Gravely, Albus said, "If you are truly my sister, then I am sorry. What happened all those years ago was my fault."

"Well," Gellert said, tucking his wand away, "I suppose this is my cue to leave. The stars and tea leaves and whatnot have always told me to not duel you, Albus."

"I don't want to duel you either," Albus said cheerfully, but there was something weary and sorrowful in his tone.

Gellert smiled charmingly at Albus. He said, "I'm sure our paths will cross again," looking back at Credence for one last time, and then he Disapparated.

"Whose side are you on?" Graves said to Albus.

"He'll probably get over it in a couple years," said a tired voice, and Credence sat up, rubbing his forehead.

Graves muttered and shook his head, and went about busying himself to revive Tina, Monty, and Esek.

Credence said, "Hello, Albus."

"Hullo," Albus said, in obvious confusion. "I suppose you all have a lot to explain."

"We do," Ariana said. She embraced her brother, and then sat next to Credence.

"You know," she said. "You're right, flower boy. There's no self-loathing in the world that can match the self-loathing of an Obscurial. But you told me it's never our fault. You shouldn't have wanted to just leave like that-"

She looked at him, feeling angry and lost all at once.

Credence looked back at her, and said, "I'll stay for you, Ariana Dumbledore. If that's what you want."

"For yourself, too," she said.

* * *

It was a week later.

Graves was taking a sabbatical from work. It was partly lingering resentment he'd garnered recently due to MACUSA: what happened at Haven and the notable fact that nobody could tell that Grindelwald was out parading as him.

"And," he said, "I need a wand. That bastard didn't return mine and I don't want to be stuck with a family wand. I refuse to cheat with an Irving-nicked wand. Teenie?"

"You want me to come along?"

"Of course," Graves said. "Who else would have my back the next time I get body-swapped?"

Tina hesitated. "I don't want to leave Queenie here, and I do think this ridiculous wand process is a hassle, but-Director Talon used to be mentored by one of the Four. He never told me exactly who, but they taught him pulsing. I've always been wondering if I could talk to that witch or wizard one day."

"You coming?" Graves said, tilting his head to indicate Credence. It was a seemingly casual request, but Credence paused, found himself thinking.

"I'll drop by Britain to see Ariana and Albus for awhile," Credence said.

Ariana and Albus left for Hogwarts two days ago. Credence had stayed behind to help Graves and Tina figure out how to write up their report about Grindelwald, which left out some details here and there.

As for Esther and Esek, they were now the new Scourer leaders and had newfound responsibility in their hands. Credence still felt guilty for what happened to their mother, but they both brushed him off and said that Prometheus being destroyed—from what they knew of his future—it was worth it.

Esther had given Ariana Mabel Arden's salamander Isla, and Ariana was learning to manage her Obscurus with the little creature's help in the place of Fawkes.

"Where are you leaving for first?" Credence asked.

"Shikoba Wolfe is rumored to live in Arizona, gathering Thunderbird feathers from their nesting grounds for his wands," Graves said. "I'll go there first."

"I know a friend who should be in Arizona right around now," Credence said, with a small smile, remembering. "-I can catch up with you."

"And wherever you go, I'm going," Monty said brightly. "I intend to fully recompense for the unfortunate Prometheus mishap."

Graves scowled, but there was no real edge to it. They'd sorted out the betrayal confusion, and Monty had bested Graves in another quick-duel again.

"I have a feeling," Credence said, rueful, "that Ariana may try to come along as well."

"It might be educational," Graves said. "It's not every day you get to meet the Four."

Credence let out a sigh. "I'll see what her brothers think."

"Don't be downtrodden," Monty said. "Chin up. It's the next adventure."

"Until Grindelwald comes knocking sometime in the future," Tina pointed out.

"But we'll be ready for him," Graves said.

"Yes," Credence said. "We will."

This new future was certainly full of possibilities. He was no Seer, but he couldn't help himself envisioning all of them out under the searing sun of the desert, or traversing the murkiness of a swamp, or near a streaming river...

This is what it means, Credence thought, to stay.


End file.
